


Escapism

by TheVineSpeaketh



Category: The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Torture, Explicit Language, M/M, Male Slash, Poor Tony, Steve Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-08-11
Packaged: 2017-12-10 09:23:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVineSpeaketh/pseuds/TheVineSpeaketh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's up to the Avengers to investigate the capture of their comrade, Iron Man, AKA Tony Stark. Some have a lot more to lose than others, and are more determined to get him back. Meanwhile, Tony must put up with copious amounts of torture, and, as an inventor, creates his own way on how to do so. Currently in the beta testing stage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Escapism

**Author's Note:**

> This story is in the beta testing stage (and, therefore, subject to random changes), and is highly malleable based on reader reviews. Your reviews are valuable to me, so if there is anything that you think needs a change, or something you want to suggest, do not hesitate to say so. :)

Captain America stepped across the threshold, his feet cracking the broken glass beneath them as his eyes warily scoped the room, searching for anything more out of place than it already was. It was near the evening, the sunset behind him casting a fiery glow across the ruined floor of Stark Tower, the wreckage dancing in its light. Glass stretched its claws across the floor, fanning away from where the window once stood. The walls nearest to the elevator were relatively unscathed, but baubles that hung on shelves near the windows and pictures that had dangled from nails had fallen helplessly to the floor, glass frames shattered and statues broken. Slabs of wood lay flat on the floor, deprived of their previous load. The inconspicuous countertops were littered with debris, barstools smashed on the floor. The open space now seemed more fit to be a launchpad, rather than a guest bedroom.

Captain America knew this was a guest bedroom because he'd slept in it once or twice, when the city had demanded his services, as well as the services of his group, and Tony Stark had been kind enough to offer digs for the night, or until their mission was over. He had been comfortable in Stark's cushy home during their most recent excursion, but that had not always been the case. At first, the modernness of the space had been stifling, making him all too aware of how sincerely he really didn't belong. But, given time, it had become a second home to him, and he had soon begun falling asleep in it without anything more than shutting his eyes.

He moved across the room, the glass snapping loudly in protest with each step he took as he assessed the damage. There were burnt marks across the floor, a few pieces of carpet tufting up where it had been ripped or pulled viciously by something catching on it. A few walls were dented in what he could only describe as someone attempting to apply blunt trauma to someone else. So Tony had known about the intrusion.

He turned back toward the window, his face blank of any emotion as he looked at the empty frame. The wind yanked and tugged at him, pulling him toward the window as the thinner atmosphere pulled the oxygen out of the room. It was clear to him that this was how the assailant entered; bursting through the window unceremoniously. It was clear to him, then, that infiltration was the least of their concerns, and they had only been interested in being there for a moment. He stared down at his feet, contemplating what he could with the limited information.

Then, lifting his head, he moved toward the small kitchenette. He did nothing about the rubble and dust tarnishing the usually-spotless countertop, or the pieces of broken cabinet nestled in between the small island and the actual counters. The doors of each were thrust wide open, some even resting on the ground, torn clean off their hinges by whatever was rifling through them. A large dent high in the wall was settled between two cabinets, the cabinet that once was there resting half on the floor, broken into wooden splinters that cascaded over the small area. Someone had been thrown there. The only damage to the sink was the faucet; it was crooked, curled in on itself and a little to the right. The only unscathed thing in the area was the mini fridge, which miraculously survived. He nearly ventured a look inside, but refrained, suddenly fearful of what anyone could have chilled in there.

He moved past the kitchenette and into the bedroom, glancing only briefly into the bathroom; the curtain was ripped, the rod flung into the wall. The medicine cabinet was opened, the usual packaged necessities spilling out like a perverse kind of vomit. In the bedroom, he found the bed in shambles; the mattress was flung against the wall, the sheets ripped and torn to shreds. The pillows were crumpled against a wall, cast aside hastily. The nightstand had one drawer hanging out haphazardly, the other was on the floor, and without its handle. The lamp was displaced and yet still alight, the alarm clock upturned, the time presented to him upside-down.

Someone had definitely wanted something in here, but whatever it was, they couldn't find it.

"Sss-aar-kh?"

The sudden fizzling engulfing the room made him jump, and he brandished his shield, looking around the room. The noise occurred again-"Sst-rkh?"-and he looked about once more, his eyes narrowed, ready to jump toward something. "Mssh-sstaah-k?" The white noise suddenly became familiar to him- _radio static_ \- and he looked about, trying to locate the source of the noise. Perhaps it was a device left behind by the assailant? "Sstt-aah?" He paused, trying to place the voice, before the answer suddenly came to him.

"Jarvis?" he asked the open air, still unused to speaking to the void.

The static paused, but only for a brief moment, before resuming, this time making a different noise. "Caahp-oghas?" He followed his ears, kneeling in the debris and pushing past all the fluff and remains of things he couldn't identify, before his eyes spotted a long cord hanging from the ceiling, disappearing just beneath the pillows.

He crawled to them, pushing them aside with one hand braced against the floor, supporting all of his weight. Just beneath sat a lone speaker, which had clearly been immersed high in the wall before, if the big gaping hole from whence it came was any indication. He picked it up, examining it and trying to understand it, when he noticed a cord behind it had somewhat-disconnected. "Cahhh-gehrs?" He gingerly picked up the break in the cord, examining it before mashing it together, pinching it in place. Suddenly, the static lifted enough for the voice to be unmistakable. "Captain Rogers?"

"I can hear you, Jarvis."

"Very good, sir. I am regretfully sorry I could not direct you, but I'm afraid my monitoring system for the room is completely jammed. Something is blocking the visual signal, sir."

The captain cursed himself for his naive confusion, and asked, "Visual signal?"

"I receive a signal from the cameras in this room, sir. They have been blocked, and so I cannot see anything. I would access the manual feed to the room through the wires, sir, but they seem to have been cut."

The captain nodded, despite Jarvis not being able to see him. "Do you know where Mr. Stark is, Jarvis?"

The omnipresent voice responded promptly. "No, sir. Surveillance had received notice of a disturbance in the form of the ruptured window in the adjacent room precisely two and a quarter hours ago. Mr. Stark had donned the suit and gone into the room, and precisely two minutes after, my system was jammed from inside the room."

"Can you get a response from the suit?"

"Negative. The suit is not active, and I cannot enable it."

"Another blocked signal?"

"Yes, sir."

The captain sighed, pinching his nose and shutting his eyes. He then opened them, allowing his hand to fall as he balanced on the balls of his feet. "Can you trace the suit's location?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but I cannot. Something is blocking the tracking signal as well. I have been disconnected from the suit. I have checked every other room in the tower, sir, and Mr. Stark is not in any of them."

"Captain?"

He froze at his name, peeking over his shoulder to see who was there, but he went lax as the Black Widow appeared in the doorway, dressed entirely in her black garb. She was staring at him, her eyes hard, and he knew that the moment she had arrived, she'd swept the area. "Have you seen Stark?"

He paused a moment, unsure if he should respond or not. It was a given, though, and he could tell he'd been caught, for she said, "None of us can find him, and we've searched everywhere. We've radioed Fury to see if he can get in contact with the suit, but he can't."

The captain clenched his fist. "Jarvis can't seem to contact him, either. He says the signal to the suit has been jammed."

She nodded, glancing around the room. "We can safely assume, then, that Stark has been captured."

"The signal to his suit could be disrupted by mass transfers of data, much like ones at Stark Industries Laboratories, but it seems highly unlikely that this would result in his absence."

Jarvis' information didn't seem noteworthy to Captain America, but the Black Widow was nodding her head, one hand on her chin. "So a bug, then."

"A signal-block could be supplied by the use of a disrupter. Several have been employed against Mr. Stark, usually to little avail."

"He's gone, then. Definitely gone."

It's funny, how words can wound more easily than weapons can, especially to extraordinary people. Natasha felt her fair share of emotions, being only human, but bullets were the more fearsome enemies to her when compared with guns. But those with less to lose physically are, in the captain's opinion, more easily stunned by the strength of words. Perceptions of what there is to gain or lose depend entirely on words. Tony not physically being there didn't stun him, for that was as it had always been; Tony was usually off experimenting or inventing, working numbers and figures to his advantage and playing with chemicals and machinery. But the finality of the words, and the truth of their meaning, was what broke Steve Rogers. Tony Stark was gone.

He bit his knuckle.

Natasha remained a silent statue in the doorway. "I'll scout the city with Hawkeye," she said after a long moment of tense silence. "We'll see if we can find Stark. In the meantime, I'll leave Banner here to help Jarvis reconnect to this room." She didn't mention what the Captain was supposed to do, because they both knew very well that when it came to human technology, he was not capable of much more than operating a radio, and even then, it was dubious.

After a brief moment of silence, the captain turned to her, only to find she was looking right at him, as if capable of seeing more than what he knew she actually could. He nodded, giving her the response she was looking for, and after a curt nod back, she left the room.

Captain America sat there for a long moment, still pinching that cable, keeping Jarvis connected. He ran a hand into his hair, his eyes squinting as he tried to realize what, exactly, the emotions running through him represented. He was an old-fashioned man, that was certain, but he didn't know much about feelings.

He didn't move until Bruce Banner was in the door, and still kept that cable tight in his fingers even afterwards, a conduit for communication between Bruce and Jarvis. For once, he didn't mind; in his current state, he felt he would be useful for little else.


	2. Absention

Blinding white. Tony Stark could see it behind his eyelids, dying them a sickeningly sweet shade of peachy red, and he knew the second he opened his eyes, that's all he would see. Blinding white. Immaculately painful white.

It would especially suck because he was no doubt being punished for getting too drunk last night. That's what happened last time he got hammered; Pepper had known he'd gotten a little too into his whiskey because he'd gotten a little too into his doubts, and so she just pulled back the curtains the morning and subjected him to this absolute torture. He'd buried his head under his pillow and moaned, grumbled, and even tried to earn sympathy, but he hadn't said sorry, because he really wasn't.

Naturally, this was a repeat performance of her unwillingness to coddle a hungover Starkling. Why else would he have this pounding headache, achy body and this  **bright light**  that he had to contend with? Seriously. This was brighter than the average window.

"Pep **perrrrr** ," he groaned, squishing his eyes shut as tightly as he could to block out as much light as he could muster. It still burst in, though the peach was more of a pomegranate, and it was still annoyingly frustrating. "I'll give your room another TV. Or another vanity. I'll make you a spa or something. Just close the curtains."

No response. So she was giving him the silent treatment, eh? Well, he'd just have to resort to his own methods. He attempted to turn, only to find that he couldn't; his blankets were wrapped around him too tightly. Did he fall asleep in his jeans? He was really uncomfortable for some reason. Sighing, he tried to reach up for his pillow, only to discover that he couldn't move his arms either. He shifted, trying to free them from their blankety prison, but they wouldn't budge.

He heaved a sigh and lifted his head, flopping it back onto his pillow. The dull clank of the metal beneath him was no improvement in regards to his headache. Perhaps he fell asleep on a table? But he had no metal tables! He tried to open his eyes, but the light was so blinding that he immediately shut them again. His head throbbed painfully. He was starting to get worried, and frustrated.

"Pepper," he said, trying to move his arms. "If this is something you and Natasha dreamed up to get me to stop drinking, it's never going to work. I've told you time and time again, I can drink without my hands. Usually that involves the body of a woman, but it's still not impossible for me." He wriggled a bit, heaving a thick sigh. This was really starting to get annoying now. "I can even pour my own shots without my hands!" He started struggling now, completely at a loss for what to do. "Seriously. This isn't fucking funny. Whoever has me tied to this table is going to have their ass  **kicked** by a  **supremely pissed off**  Iron Man. Banner, is it you? Seriously, if you wanted to check out the arc reactor all you had to do was ask. I would've even unplugged it for you. Natasha, Barton? You guys behind this? Because if so, your little spy games are going to end prematurely."

He began rambling now, blaming everyone he knew he could blame in jest, because he knew something was incredibly wrong here, and he had to cope with it, at least hope that it wasn't real. "Thor? Is this some Asgardian tradition or something? Am I receiving some kind of honor? Are you going to initiate me into manhood? I'm already man enough, if you couldn't tell by my liver. Who else, who else, who else... Cap! Cap, is it you? Wait, why the hell would  **you** tie me up, Cap? Seriously, you're the last of our Fellowship who would actually take the chance to tie me up. Then again, I did just blame Banner, and he's not even that much of an aggressor. That passive bastard doesn't even know what-"

A metal clang shut him up quickly. He opened his eyes, looking around, but it wasn't good enough. The rest of the room was in complete blackness, the light hitting the table he was strapped to all he could see, and even then, it was iffy. It was so blinding and so bright that he almost  **couldn't**  see what it was hitting. The rest was too dark; far, far too dark for him to see anything. His arms and legs were strapped to the table, his wrists individually bound to the edges. His head was still hurting, and he began to remember what had happened to make him end up here.

The intruder, digging through Cap's room, searching frantically for something. He'd gone in there to fight them, and then he was thrown around like a rag doll, and the suit started falling to pieces after that thing he dropped turned on...

"Where am I?" he asked, straining against his bonds. He looked around the darkness, trying to measure himself and gain an ounce of composure. "Why am I here? I heard you messing with whatever that was; I know you're here!" He let his neck relax, allowing his head to lay back, when he began hearing footsteps. His eyes opened again as a figure shaded the light from his eyes, a thick finger gloved in black tapping against the glowing emblem on his chest. It was then that he realized he wasn't wearing a shirt, and the belt trapping him there was digging painfully into his ribcage. He tried to shift down to relieve it, but to no avail. The finger tapped it again, and he went completely still.

" _Que es eso_?" the stranger asked, their voice deep and rumbling. Tony paused a moment, cocking his head to the left. He racked his brain, trying to find the way his father had taught him to tell Spanish-speaking people that he didn't speak Spanish.

"Ehm...  _No quiero esta_."

It was the figure's turn to cock their head; but they tilted it to the right. " _Que quieres_?"

Clearly, he had gotten the wrong thing, if them still speaking Spanish was anything to go by. "Hold up, let me try this again..." He thought for a moment before going on. " _No me gusta_."

The figure seemed even more confused. " _Por que no_?" they asked, their voice attaining a child-like curiosity. Tony sighed, frustrated and annoyed. Perhaps this was all a misunderstanding, or an elaborate prank. He could dare to dream, right?

He tried it in English. Maybe he could understand a little bit of it. "I can't speak Spanish."

The man nodded a little bit, and suddenly, the gruff voice was speaking English, tainted with a Spanish accent. "Why didn't you say so,  _prisionero_? It would make this interrogation  _mucho mas facil_ ; much easier."

"Interrogation?" he asked, his skin crawling suddenly. "And what, exactly, am I being asked about?"

"Oh, you know," the man replied, poking the arc reactor again. Tony didn't like the weird feeling it gave him. "We just want to ask you about that chip  _Capitan America_  stole from us and brought to Stark Tower. The one he'd left in that guest room, and the one we went to retrieve, only it wasn't there." He leaned in low, his face closer to Tony's, but that light still made it impossible to see his face when it was blinding one eye. His voice grew lower, and more sinister. "Where is it?"

Tony pushed his face away as far as he could, pushing his head hard against the metal behind him. His head wound sparked to life again. "Chip? I don't know anything about a chip."

The man could've quirked an eyebrow for all he knew; his voice made it certainly sound like he did. "You don't?" Tony shook his head. "Are you sure?" he asked, seeming dubious about his lack of information on this matter.

"Absolutely certain," he said with much certainty, indeed.

The man straightened himself, the light once again hitting Tony's unexposed eye, much to his distaste. "If you're so certain," he muttered as he turned away, stepping out of the light for a moment. Tony allowed himself to close his eyes, a small sigh of relief escaping him. Maybe this wasn't going to turn out the way that he thought it would. Maybe he would get away from this completely fin-

-or, you know, they could take a hammer to his arm, because that works entirely well too.

Tony couldn't help his first cry, which was more from surprise than anything else. A voice was speaking, but he couldn't tell who it was; his head was nothing compared to the pain of his arm. He didn't know if it was broken or just terribly bruised. As his head cleared, his thoughts goopy like molasses, he heard two people conversing entirely in Spanish.

"Do you know about a chip now?" another voice asked, clearly not the original Spaniard. This one actually had an American accent, as far as he could tel-

-he cried out, another strike hitting his arm in the exact same place, and if it wasn't broken before, it certainly was now. He became suddenly dizzy. "Give me a fucking minute to answer, you asshole!" he cried, and his face was stricken, hard. He didn't know if they hit him with the hammer or if they'd just smacked him. "I don't know anything about a goddamn chip!"

For a moment, all was silent. Then, he heard them talking, both of them out of his line of sight, out there somewhere in the inky blackness. His arm was throbbing painfully, his hand spasming randomly. He willed himself to keep from fainting.

"Do we believe him? Do you think he's lying?" the new voice asked frantically, clearly agitated and angry.

"I don't know."

They huffed through their teeth. "You don't understand, Antonio, I need that motherfucking chip."

"I understand, but-"

"I will kill him for that chip. I will kill  **anybody**  for that chip. Including you. Including Ines." He could hear the underlying menace in that sentence and he knew Ines was someone the Spaniard was more than willing to protect. "Understand?"

The Spaniard - Antonio now - was silent, and Tony suspected that he nodded, for the other man replied, "Good. Now, either get on this yourself or get Hans to do it. I don't care. Just get it done so I can find it!"

The door opened, and after a few angry mutters, it was closed again. Footsteps approached him, and two shadows appeared simultaneously on either side of him. He looked at them, his mouth tightly shut. His arm was swollen heavily, his fist clenched as he tried to keep it from swelling too. He was breathing heavily, but evenly, trying to prevent himself from giving in to the pain. He looked back and forth at the two shadows, trying to ready himself, mentally, for what was to come. One leaned lower than the other, taking his chin in their hand and jerking him to face them, leaving his bruised cheek under the harsh scrutiny of the light.

"He hit him pretty hard, didn't he?" This was an entirely new voice.

Tony allowed himself a bitter smile, his cheek swelling, squinting his eye. At least it blocked out more of the light. "You must be Hans."

Hans looked up at the Spaniard, who looked back at him. "You ought to go. I know how much you detest these practices."

The Spaniard nodded, tilting his head down at Tony once more before disappearing, leaving only Hans' shadow to cascade over Tony's face. He stared intently at Tony's face until he heard the door open and shut once again. Then he dropped his grip on Tony's chin, moving off into the shadow. Tony braced himself mentally for what was to come, expecting nothing more than himself in shackles, trapped with no escape in the thick grip of pain.

What he wasn't expecting was a soft woman's voice to start wafting over the atmosphere, as out of place as a flower, or a sunbeam. He groaned, smiling once again and turning his head in the general direction where Hans disappeared. "What is this, 'A Clockwork Orange'? How uninspired, Hans. I thought more of you. Even the name 'Hans' inspires fear. Now I just think you're cheating."

His hand was gripped, the bond around his wrist untied. His palm was flattened, two thumbs resting at the bottom edge of it, the rest of the hands curling around either side of his hand, fingers resting at the bottom. "This isn't even Beethoven; it's French, not German. Just like I am. They only call me Hans because my real name isn't the name of a torturer." Before Tony could question, he yanked, and Tony cried out as his arm cracked sickeningly, the injured bone pulling apart excruciatingly. Tony was slapped on his injured cheek, and he huffed a harsh breath, feeling leather being stuffed between his lips before something covered it, effectively stopping him from killing himself.

Hans moved back to his arm, gripping it like he did his palm, digging his thumbs into the darkening bruise there. Tony cried into the makeshift muzzle, his eyes tearing up. "You know what's sad, Tony?" Hans asked, one hand removing itself from his arm to wipe a tear from his face. He chanced a glance at Hans, who was simply looking down at him, digging that one thumb into the spot persistently, rolling it around traitorously. "This is only the beginning, little starling, and you're already crying. There are so many things I've yet to do to you." He leaned in a little closer, caressing his hurt cheek. "Don't cry," he whispered. "I know you don't know anything. But I can't stop. I'm sorry." He stood up straighter, looking off into the darkness. "And yet, I'm not."

He removed his hand, and Tony breathed out hard, only to receive a hard punch in the same place. He sucked in a hard breath and held it, groans escaping him as the spot was struck repeatedly, a sharp bolt of pain searing through him, hot as an iron. Hans stopped, moving out of sight once again, to where Tony assumed his tools were. "You know, there used to be terrible torture tactics out there involving wheels, and hammers, and bamboo. Saws and spikes were used, too. Me? I prefer the art of torture with my bare hands. As few tools as possible. It makes it all the more intimate."

He paused, before resuming once more, the noise of shuffling metal distracting to Tony. "And the woman? Well, she's here to make you cry, too." He returned with what looked like a rubber mallet. Tony prayed for the first time in a long while. "She's singing about Romeo and Juliette. She's too beautiful to be here, isn't she, Tony? Her beautiful, mournful voice is singing over your pain, as if it doesn't exist." The mallet struck his arm, and the song rose to an excruciating height. Tony cried out loudly, his voice not going far in the dark room, his body writhing as he fought against the pain. Then he was struck again, and he heard the final crack as his bone completely broke, and he screamed, because he still kept hitting it, as if that didn't matter. Finally, he struck his arm for the last time, and using the backward momentum, he cast the mallet to the wall, the loud bang it made as it landed on the floor nothing he could concern himself with.

Hans stood there, heaving, before taking Tony's face in his hands again, squishing his cheeks and re-inspiring his headache. Tony's eyes were still welling with tears, and he fought the urge to move, afraid he would hurt himself further. He looked up at Hans, finally seeing his face, and was surprised to see someone that apparently  **young**. Hans leaned in, kissing his forehead gently before releasing him. Then, he walked into the shadows and out of the room, the door opening and closing. Tony knew that would be a sound he would dread for the entirety of his life forevermore.

For a while, he was alone. He remained stock still at first, trying not to expose any more emotion. But as time wore on, he found he could take it no longer, and so he began to sob, trying in vain to clench his fist again, his cheek hurting, his head pounding. He dared not look at his arm, for fear of noticing the awkward angle at which it now sat, broken and useless. Hans hadn't tied the wrist back up, but there was no point; moving any of his fingers was either impossible or incredibly painful.

The choir rising in a gentle chorus, Tony stared up at the blinding white light. Then, he began to sob into the leather, swallowing its bitter taste as the gentle sound of the woman's voice echoed hollowly in his ear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, any suggestions or constructive criticism is appreciated, and thank you for reading!


	3. Circumvention

Tony was still missing. Jarvis and Fury couldn't get in touch with him, and Jarvis had devoted the entirety of his database to locating the last recorded location of Tony's suit, as well as scanning the entirety of the tower for anything out of place or strange; something the aggressors would be after. Meanwhile, Bruce had nearly gotten the blown out floor reconnected into the system wirelessly. He left the manual repairing of the wires themselves to the captain, who was thankful, because his mutinous mind was not allowing him any moment of peace.

He'd been shown how easy splicing a wire could be, and so he'd set himself to it, surrounded by little wheels of electrical tape and a few pairs of pliers. As he cut and twisted wires together, he began thinking once more, his hands idly working while his mind went elsewhere.

His reaction to Tony's disappearance was something he wanted to avoid, but his mind seemed masochistic enough to bring it up at every given moment, and always when he least wanted it.

He looked up from his work, relieved to see Bruce still fiddling with some settings on a laptop. It was strange to see the normally-slightly-prudish doctor sitting up on a countertop with a Stark Industries laptop in his lap, listening to Jarvis as he attempted to manually clear the last of the roadblocks keeping him from accessing the room. It was comforting to know that he wasn't physically alone, and so he could talk with Bruce at any time, glance up at Bruce at any time, relieve himself of the torment his mind was becoming at  **any given time**...

And yet, he didn't say anything. All he did was glance up at the doctor and pray that that was enough, for now. For somewhere, in the twisted annals of his brain, the captain was convinced that this was something he had to do. Like the way he had felt when attempting to stop Red Skull. He had to face this head-on, without fear. But it was also with a major sense of understanding that he had last felt this, and this time, he knew understanding and knowledge were not on his side. He had faced this brand of emotion before, but never had he felt it with such a blinding force. It left him staggering for what little control he could over his impulses.

"You okay, Steve?"

Shaken from his thoughts, he looked up at the doctor, and never had he been more grateful for a distraction in the entirety of his life. He smiled, trying to ease the worried furrow in the man's brow, feeling guilty for having sparked the doctor's worry. "Yeah, I'm fine," he replied, turning his attention once again to the wire-cutters and the little jagged snippets of bronze sticking out from the top of tiny rubber tubes. He deftly twined two wires together, creating a stable medium before doing the same to the other end.

Bruce Banner, however, wasn't convinced. "Are you sure?" he asked, and the captain smiled wider, his need to keep the doctor from worrying no longer the reason for it. He jumped, however, when the speaker skittered to life, a loud snap suddenly silencing the light static that had been flowing through it once before. Bruce's worried look suddenly smoothed over, a little smile coming to his face. "You're just jumpy, aren't you?" he asked, and Steve couldn't help the obedient nod that he gave. After their first encounter all those months ago, he had grown a bit closer to the doctor, even going so far as to respect him entirely, as the man had even helped him get over his initial feeling of weakness - after all, the others had nothing but extreme gifts and supreme skills, and what did he have? A serum.

Bruce had convinced him - as Tony had convinced the doctor - that what he had was nothing to be looked down upon. Even a curse can be twisted to one's advantage. Just because he wasn't expertly trained, like Romanoff or Barton, or skilled in a helpful art, like Stark, didn't mean that he was any weaker. Bruce, too, was the result of chemicals and formulas, and he had learned to simply cope with it. He knew that Steve was a born leader, and he had told him so; and the feeling of being needed was what kept Steve going long after the conversation was over.

Ever since, he had seen the doctor as his portal to this new world, as a way of coping with the modernism of Tony Stark and the Black Widow and the Avengers Initiative.

"I miss him too."

He looked up again, surprised to find the doctor's smile had turned sad. He fidgeted slightly, the laptop on his crossed legs moving about slightly before he settled in on himself once again. "I'm afraid for him, obviously. He's never gone this long without some kind of contact, and it's not as if we can ignore what happened here." He didn't glance around the room, but Steve did. "But Jarvis is working to find him, and Fury is working to find him. We're all working to find him." His words were encouraging, but only just so. He knew every effort being made was the best effort they could afford, but it still didn't seem like enough to him. It confused him to no end. Usually the efforts of his comrades were enough to tide him over if the crisis hit home, but this time, it didn't feel like anything was being done. It was unfair, but he couldn't stop it.

"This isn't something I usually talk about, Steve," Bruce said, and he sounded fairly timid. Steve resurfaced from his mind and looked at the doctor, finding the look he saw on his face entirely too strange. "But, if you give me a chance, I think I can help you clear your head."

Steve nodded once more, not even surprised the doctor knew what he was thinking. He shifted again, this time setting the laptop aside. After a long, silent moment of looking at Steve, he asked, very quietly, "How concerned are you for Tony's safety?"

Steve looked at him a moment, trying to put into words what he was feeling. After a moment of silent pondering, Bruce amended his question. "How about this; on a scale of one to ten, how concerned are you for Tony's safety?"

This was easier. Numbers were easy; it was emotions that were difficult. "Ten," he said, without hesitation, and the doctor nodded, as if thinking about his answer. Then, he leaned forward, his hands pressing down on the countertop as his feet swung over the edge, dangling there. His glasses flickered in the darkening light, the rising moon shining brilliantly outside.

After a moment of what appeared to be intense contemplation, the doctor smiled, looking at Steve. "Don't worry. He'll come back." There was a small moment of silence before he hopped down from the counter, taking the now-repaired speaker from in front of Steve and peeking at the back. Then, he moved to the laptop once more, leaning against the counter as he entered a long string of code before it finally let out a noise akin to a 'ping', and a very smooth voice said, "I appear to be online once more, Doctor Banner."

"Very good, Jarvis," Bruce replied, still working at the laptop. "Did you get any coordinates for the suit's last known location?"

"As a matter of fact I have, sir," Jarvis replied, and Steve couldn't deny the way he sat up straighter, or the feeling of his ears perking at that news. "The last known location of the suit's helmet was five miles north-northeast of here, near the river. However, there are tracking signals all around that area. I believe the suit had been dumped in the river, completely disassembled."

Bruce's brow pressed together again. "Can you contact Romanoff and Barton with this information?"

"Certainly, sir." A moment of silence ensued. Then, "I have contacted Romanoff successfully, and Fury has been made aware of the situation. They are currently on their way to the river. Shall I activate the signal to the suit, sir?"

"That would be good, Jarvis; thank you," Bruce replied, and with a small "You're welcome, Doctor Banner," the AI went offline. Bruce put something in his ear, handing another to Steve, and headed for the elevator. Steve rose to his feet and followed him, examining the small something in his hand before placing it in his ear. Pressing the button to the garage, Bruce turned his head to Steve, watching as he wrung his hands, looking adamantly at the floor. He said nothing of it.

"While you are gone, sirs, I will be running diagnostics on the tower and run signal searches to try to find a reason the intruders came here. It's obvious they were not here for Mister Stark."

"Okay, Jarvis," Bruce replied, messing with the cuff of his sleeve. "See what you can find. We'll be heading to the river."

"Of course, sir."

Bruce looked over at Steve, who was still wringing his hands, his skin a light pink from the constant abrasion. He put a hand on Steve's shoulder, causing the youth to snap his eyes to the doctor. "It's going to be okay, Steve," he said, his voice soothingly optimistic. He wasn't trying to force calmness into him, rather, coax it instead. Steve nodded, feeling a little lighter from the encouragement. Besides, Tony could take care of himself. He furrowed his brows. Mr. Stark, not Tony.

The elevator opened, and they were in the garage. Steve instantly moved to his bike, sliding on his helmet and turning it on, gaining some confidence from the revving engine and the weight of it. They'd go to the river. They'd sort this all out.

He'd be back before he knew it.

* * *

"Breathe, Tony Stark. Just breathe."

Tony huffed heavily through his nose, his face tight where the sweat and tears had dried on his cheeks and forehead. He was just recovering from a very rude wake-up call that consisted of that rubber mallet that he'd almost had the gall to forget and that injury that he had spent hours fighting just so he could sleep. On the plus side, he thought he could feel a bandage on his forehead where he'd been headbutted in that fight with that bastard. He just wondered who the hell it was that he had been fighting in that guest bedroom what seemed like ages ago; the Torture Technician Hans, the Elegantly Evil Antonio, or the Mysterious Stranger.

The tape was abruptly ripped from his mouth, and he took the moment to spit out the leather and lick his lips, which were dried from their constantly being open. Before he could get a word in, though, the mallet seemed to want to remind him of its presence. "G-ahh, right, mallet, I fucking forgot," he murmured quickly, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes. Hans laughed - for he was with Hans again today, or at least, for now - and moved away, allowing his arm to drop again. Tony hissed at the feeling. His arm was  **not** doing well in any sense of the term. He couldn't feel the fingers below, and the wound itself was harder to ignore than a nuclear war. "It would be a crime if this arm couldn't be used again, no?" he asked, picking up Tony's arm and inspecting it, moving each of his numbed fingers. "To not be able to invent anything except with one arm... That'd be a shame." He stared at the fingertips in that eerie way that he stared at most things. "A lifetime of creativity cut short." Then, he pushed forward, bending the arm back onto itself, and Tony couldn't stop the harsh cry that escaped him, loud and unadulterated. His elbow was bent, but that put a whole new world of pressure on the wound that he was completely unfamiliar on how to cope with.

Hans' free hand stroked his brow, his mouth misshapen as he quietly shushed Tony, once again laying a kiss to his forehead. He pressed down, allowing his body to lay on Tony's arm, and Tony screamed again, tears streaking down his face. "GOD!" he cried, a sob lodged in his throat, huffing quick breaths from his nose, attempting to slow down his heart rate. Now was not a time to go into cardiac arrest, or have a panic attack.

Hans didn't seem to notice his inner conundrum, for he began speaking, staring past Tony's head and into the dark void beyond. It was sad, that the only things Tony knew here were Antonio, Hans, the table, that light, the darkness, and that motherfucking mallet. If he didn't have any physical difficulty grabbing a hammer later in his life, he'd certainly have some psychological qualms about it.

"I had a wife, I think," Hans said quietly, and Tony took a moment to focus on him, his eyes hazy from a combination of tears and dizzying pain. He was aching, his eyes on fire, his body crusted and weary, but any distraction was a welcome distraction. "Once upon a time. Yes, once upon a time, I had a wife." He seemed more sure of himself now. "She was beautiful; curly brown hair and striking green eyes. Of course, like all wives do, she had her own little perks. She liked flowers and wine and tea and a book by a fire. But she also had cancer." He stroked Tony's brow almost subconsciously, his eyes still on that darkened patch of room behind him, as if she was standing there, and he could see her. "Hamilton told me that he'd pay for my hospital bills if I gave working for him a try. He knew I could hack computers, so I think that's what he wanted me for. He hired me for the technological prowess, and kept me for my ability to inflict pain." He looked down at Tony again. "Her name was Melusina. She was all I ever wanted. Even now, laid up in a hospital bed, she is still all I want." He pulled in closer to Tony, his breath brushing his face, and for one frightening moment, Tony thought he was going to kiss him. Instead, he whispered, sweetly and softly, "is there anything you wanted more than anything, Mr. Stark?" The hand stroking his brow moved to caress his cheekbone, gently grazing over the bruised skin, not even pressing; just feeling.

Tony knew what he was getting at, and through his grit teeth, he managed to say, "I don't want your chip, if that's what you're asking. I don't even know what chip you're looking for. I don't even know what kind of chip it is. Is it a microchip? A navigation chip? A cell-phone chip? A potato chip? Are you looking for a Pringle? Is that what you're looking for? Ruffles? It's those damn ridges, isn't it?"

The door burst open, and Hans pulled back, his arm going slack in the most painful way as it unrolled itself, and he groaned, his eyes shutting again. His shoulders were gripped, though, and hard, and the loud crack of his collarbone under the hammer was enough to make him cry out again. Again and again, the hammer struck, and Tony screamed, crying out, sobs wracking his voice, and never once in his life had he felt so pitiful, so base. To think that he could survive terrorists, only to discover his death at the hands of a band of misfits looking for something he didn't even know he had. Then, he got an idea. He'd kept himself alive by appeasing the terrorists. Maybe he could appease these guys, too.

"DON'T YOU FUCKING  **TOY AROUND** WITH ME, TONY STARK! I **NEED**  THAT  **FUCKING** CHIP!" The hammer struck three times in rapid succession, and Tony writhed painfully, feeling muscle tear around the area. His arm was forgotten; that was a quickly dying pain compared to this horror. " **WHERE THE FUCK _IS_** ** _IT?!_** "

"I don't fucking know!" he replied, his voice highly strained. "But listen - nah-ah-ah-ah, I asked you to  **listen** , don't raise a hammer at me - I can help you, okay?" His breathing evened as he looked at this madman, seeing his pupils blown wide, the manic look on his face, and that hammer gleaming evilly in the bright light. But he was listening. He hadn't struck since Tony opened his mouth. Tony panted, calming himself before continuing. "I can help you out. I can help you make another chip, okay? I can make a better one than last time - "

He cried out as his arm was pulled from his binding and ruthlessly twisted, the two broken bones grinding unpleasantly beneath the skin. He felt nauseous, oh so nauseous. "I don't need a new chip, you fucking tool," the tormentor said - he remotely registered him as Hamilton from Hans' story - "and don't you dare compare me to a FUCKING  **TERRORIST _GROUP,_** YOU CUNT!" He held his arm that way for a long while, adjusting it jerkily just to watch Tony scream before suddenly dropping it and moving toward the darkness. "Inject him with some of that shit; I need some fucking coffee." He left the room, the door opening and closing, and through his narrowed eyes Tony could see even Hans wincing. Antonio appeared from the darkness on his other side, the way he had when Hans had first been introduced to Tony. He had a small piece of rubber tubing and a small box, which he laid on Tony's torso. Tony tried to see what he was doing, but Hans leaned in, his forehead once again touching Tony's. Now, Tony could see the wrinkles on his face, but those blue eyes were now discernibly so, though they weren't the most gorgeous set he'd seen. He couldn't recall where else he'd seen blue eyes, much less a pair to combat the Frenchman's, but he knew that he had.

"I wanted a Bugatti Veyron more than anything in the world," Hans whispered again, his eyes always on Tony's, despite their proximity, "but that isn't what I meant. I wanted Melusina more than anybody else in the world, and certainly more than any material worth. She was all I had. Who do you have, Tony Stark, besides your mistress, Loneliness?" He let loose a smile, and Tony wanted to reply, but suddenly his lips fell numb, as did the rest of him. He was getting really tired, and Hans straightened up, revealing Antonio once again. He was closing his box, which Tony wasn't even aware he opened, and he looked down at Tony, a sad look on his face. Hans walked away into the darkness, and soon after, Antonio followed, leaving Tony alone in the light. As his eyes began sliding closed, he turned his head, his neck too weak to hold itself upright. Before his eyes finally closed, though, he caught a glimpse of something, leaving a question he had unspoken.

When did that woman get in the room?

* * *

Tony Stark wasn't at the river, but Jarvis was right about one thing; the suit was everywhere.

And the sad thing was, that wasn't an understatement. Littered throughout the brush surrounding the river were little pieces of gold or red metal, a few nuts and bolts lying about, as if the suit had simply been left to drift in the current and had washed ashore. As Steve picked up each metal sheet and tested its weight in his hands, Jarvis told him where that piece would have gone, had the thing been entirely assembled.

His most recent recovery was a small red parallelogram about the size of his thumb. It was entirely red, front and back, and had a few holes where no doubt a support structure should have been attached.

Jarvis' voice piped up in his ear, quiet enough to be nothing more than a gentle murmur but still startling to the captain. "That was part of the neckpiece, sir."

"Good to know, Jarvis," Steve replied, his tone uneasy. After staring at it a few moments, he let his arm drop, scanning the area around him. Bruce and Fury - who had opted to be present for this discovery - were meandering around picking up the pieces, their eyes scanning the ground for any other shiny bits of metal, each one integral to the suit in some way or another. He had long ago sent Natasha and Clint upriver to try and find out anything about this occurrence. Everyone knew that something was completely amiss here, and for once, he wasn't out of the loop; in fact, it all seemed rather odd to him. Wasn't Tony never without the suit somewhere nearby? What if he was truly hurt, then, incapable of defending himself in any way?

"Captain Rogers and Doctor Banner are holding the final pieces of the suit," Jarvis' voice said.

"That should be all of them, then," Bruce said, straightening from where he bent to place a golden piece in a bag that Fury proffered. His voice had startled Steve out of his musings, which he was once again grateful for, and he looked at the doctor, moving to hand him the piece of the suit that he was holding.

"All we have to do now," Fury added, depositing the final piece before shouldering the bag and looking between Rogers and the doctor, "is figure out what the hell this suit is doing here, and in pieces, no less." A thick moment of silence rolled by, during which everyone knew the implications of the situation. Nobody voiced their doubts, because nobody dared to; hope was not something they could afford to lose. "Tony is without the suit, which means he is without any means of communication. He would hardly go far without it, so it is safe to assume that Iron Man is missing in action as of this moment." His look hardened severely, and Steve was reminded of how well he led S.H.I.E.L.D., and how seldom he failed. It was a cold comfort indeed, but it was one he needed, even if he was unaware of why he needed it yet. He supposed it was because he'd seen Iron Man's suit in pieces; but then, why would that disturb him so much?

Fury continued, completely unaware of Steve's inner monologue. "We need to know where he's gone to, and who has him. Does anyone know anything of the people who might have captured him?"

"I might have a few thoughts on the matter."

Three heads swiveled to Clint Barton, who stood there holding a black mass of something wet and entirely too rubbery to be anything but manmade. Approached, Natasha right behind him, flipping that something and locating a tear in it, smoothing that area over his palm. There was sand and wet stones inside, but as he shuffled it around, the bright reflective surface of metal could be seen within. A piece of the suit, no doubt a nut or bolt, but a piece nonetheless. "We found this near the bridge not far up the river; someone clearly cast it out."

Fury beckoned to him for it, and Hawkeye relinquished it without qualm. He examined it, Bruce approaching next to him and taking a look for himself. "That doesn't make any sense," Banner murmured as Fury examined the inside of the back, as well as the plastic ties knotted together at the top. "Why would someone abandon the suit? That's the most valuable piece of Iron Man; the suit is no doubt worth a fortune on the black market."

"It was obvious that they weren't after the suit itself, but something else." Fury sounded more than upset. He clearly hadn't counted on someone assaulting or kidnapping a member of the Avengers; at least, not succeeding with it. "Their method of retrieval was blindly planned, though, all things considered. Taking Tony at his home, where all his gadgets are; not to mention his AI or his massive security system? That's more than stupid. And why that specific floor to break into, when the penthouse could have been so much easier?" He shook his head, scoffing to himself, but it was clear he was deep in thought. "They weren't there for Tony; at least, not only for him. I think they were looking for something. Something on that floor, something more valuable than Iron Man."

Steve thought for a moment, suddenly remembering something. He'd spent the night there not too long ago, on that very floor. After that last mission that they'd gotten - well, he, Widow and Hawkeye had gotten. They had broken up a gang of men trying to trade stolen S.H.I.E.L.D. property for money. They'd succeeded, and he had returned to the tower to sleep that night. Tony had been down in the lab, but Jarvis had assured him that he would make Tony aware of his arrival and he was more than welcome to sleep there for the night. Not Tony. Not Tony. Mr. Stark. Mr. Stark.

"Fury, sir?" he asked, and the man looked at him from the bag, his attention now fully focused on Steve. "I think I may know a reason why they broke into that floor of Stark Tower."

"Proceed."

He stood up straighter, finding a foothold in this speculation. He was created to solve problems, and now that he was actively implemented into one, he found it easier to focus. "After the recent bust on the smuggling ring trying to sell S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment to underground merchants, I spent the night on that floor in Stark Tower. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but there may be something strange about the ring that we hadn't perceived."

Fury nodded, looking down at the bag once more. Silenced reigned supreme until he looked up, his face set in resolution. "Doctor Banner, could you perform some tests to see if this bag was altered in any way? I find it hard to believe that Jarvis couldn't get a read on the suit until just recently." The Doctor nodded, and Fury placed it in the satchel, handing it to the doctor. Then, he turned to Natasha. "You and Hawkeye try to find more information on that smuggling ring. We've cataloged all the items stolen and the individuals responsible. See if you can pull up any more information regarding it, as well as those files." They nodded, and then Fury's intimidating gaze turned to Steve. "I need to ask you a few questions regarding the smuggling ring. You may be onto something."

"Pardon my intrusion," Jarvis voiced, his words cutting cleanly through the invading silence, "but a reading in the destroyed room has come back positive. There are two signals being broadcast; one on a very low frequency, and the other, very high. I believe they require investigation."

Fury made a face that was open to interpretation. "We're on our way, Jarvis."

"Certainly sir. I will have the elevator waiting for you."

The team wasted no time in doing as they were told. Now that they had a lead, Steve felt more certain of their efforts. They were moving on a steady course to enlightenment, and Tony's well-being - and maybe even his life - hung threateningly in the balance. As he mounted his bike once more and made his way back to Stark Tower, he felt more certain of himself than he had in a long while.

_Hang on, Tony. We're doing all we can._

* * *

Tony's eyes slid open of their own accord, and he instantly shifted, his mind slipping into overdrive as he tried to brace himself for the impact of a mallet or a hammer. It took a tense five minutes of nothing happening for Tony to relax his guard and finally open his eyes.

"Whoa!" he cried, jolting away from the woman standing next to his bed. He struggled blindly against his bindings before settling down again, panting and leaning his head back down on the table. "You scared the shit out of me. Seriously. Don't scare me. I like it about as much as I like being handed things." A pause ensued. Then, he took the moment to clarify his previous statement. "I don't like being handed things. At all."

There was a small swishing noise, and he couldn't help his flinch. Noises in the darkness were never precedents for good, happy times. Instead of a physical assault, or even a blindfold - which would be a mercy at this point - he simply heard the small, softly uttered, "Sorry."

His eyes opened again, and he turned his head to look at the woman, surprised that he could actually make out her features in the darkness. Maybe his eyes were finally adjusting to this hellhole? Either way, he could see her, and that was a plus. He scrutinized her, unsure if he could trust her or not. She certainly looked the part of a trustworthy maiden. Her hair was long, brown, and lapped down her collarbones in thick, lazy curls, her eyes big and green. Her nose was a bit too small, her lips a bit too flat, but she had a beautiful complexion. She was wearing a brown sweater, and it looked a little big on her.

He was tempted to trust her, but previous experience dictated he shouldn't trust the nice ones. He trusted Hans, the seemingly-benevolent Frenchman, and now he had a severe issue with his left arm. After a moment of consideration, he came to a conclusion. He decided he would trust her, but only for a moment. He squinted his eyes. "You. You said sorry."

"I did, actually. Do you mind if I am? I didn't mean to scare you."

He sputtered, aghast at the statement. "Didn't mean to scare me? I've had my collarbone beaten in my a strange man who thinks I stole his Lays. I've had my  **arm**  broken by a culture-confused Frenchman who may or may not love me. I've been injected with drugs by someone who may very well be my Spanish evil twin. Out of all of that,  **your being sorry**  is the most terrifying thing I've heard in the time I've been here."

She laughed, and it was sweet, almost comforting him. Almost. The remaining pain in his head, cheek, shoulder and arm effectively kept him wary of everything. "You're terribly funny, even if you've been hurt."

"And you're terribly clean, even if you're in here." He furrowed his brows. "And easy to see. You aren't carrying LEDs, are you?"

She snorted. "Of course not. Don't be silly." She crossed her arms behind her back. "What's your name?"

He raised an eyebrow. "You can't already tell who I am from my charming portable flashlight and my charismatic ability to make you want to sleep with me?" He couldn't deny she was attractive, in a quirky way.

She shook her head, pointedly ignoring his flirt. "I'm sorry, but I don't know anybody beyond the French border."

His eyebrow shot up higher, and he adjusted himself, groaning when he pulled his arm in the wrong way. He bit his lip, closing his eyes and willing the pain away. When he opened his eyes again, she was looking down at her feet, as if guilty about something. He resumed their conversation, not liking the pity he'd no doubt receive from her. "And why don't you?"

She rocked on her feet, looking back at him again. Her sad look had subsided. "My husband and I rarely did leave France. He was gone for a long while, though, and he wasn't able to make it back in time to meet the deadline."

He cocked his head, willing her to explain, but she seemed to think that he already knew. An awkward moment of silence passed. Finally, he decided to get his answers. "Your husband missed the deadline?" he asked, dancing around the issue. She nodded, her curls bouncing. Another moment. "What deadline?"

She tilted her head this time, and he was vaguely reminded of the little foreign language tango he'd done with Antonio not too long ago. He wasn't making any attempts at tracking time; it'd only frustrate him. "The deadline of my life." His confused look was all she needed to explain. "I had cancer, you see, and my husband had gone off on a job, saying it would pay for my treatment. Well, it got worse, so I decided to go ahead and get it over with. I was at stage three, and I really couldn't survive beyond that point. So I asked to be released, so to speak. I only regret not seeing him one last time." She looked down at her feet, kicking one back and forth. Meanwhile, Tony was trying to digest all of this.

She said she was French. He'd overlooked the coincidence in both she and Hans being French, because, well, it was just the United Nations in here. She said she had cancer. That was also pretty common, so he overlooked that, too. But her husband leaving her for a job that would pay for her treatment was too many coincidences in a row. Which meant that this woman was Hans' wife. And she was also dead.

"Melusina?" he asked quietly, and she looked at him, as if expecting a question; but, looking in his eyes a moment, she nodded, understanding his gaze. Her expression was sad, and yet full of life. He looked at her -  **really** looked at her - feeling a sudden wave of nausea again; nausea and exhaustion, as if he couldn't take much more than this. He had to know. He had to know.

So he said it. He let his rough, scratchy voice, abused by his screams, release it, before it exploded in his chest. "You're dead, aren't you?" It sounded more like a statement. His wounded heart couldn't handle an innocent question.

She waited a moment before nodding slowly, her eyes trained on him. "But I'm not here for Lonnell. I'm here for you."

Tony's mouth went dry, his eyelids drooping. "Me?" he asked, his voice slower than usual, dropping an octave. "Am I dying?"

She shook her head, fond of using as few words as she could to respond to questions. Her eyes never left his, but it was a soothing kind of being watched, like guardianship. "I'm here to help you cope."

Tony scoffed, his eyes finally shut. "This is a product of the drugs, isn't it?"

Her giggle was the second-to-last thing he heard. The last was a whispered, "Maybe. Good night."

Then, he was blissfully asleep.


	4. Eschewal

Jarvis had pinpointed the two signals, and after a relatively amusing game of 'Hot and Cold', they finally retrieved the two items. The first was a small box-shaped thing that whirred quietly on the inside, quite like an external hard drive. Its cover was a dull silver with the texture of a linoleum countertop, and it seemed to do little more than just whir. If Steve stood too close to it, though, it gave him a headache, but it didn't seem to bother Fury. He had begun tinkering with it, leaving Steve to locate the second signal in the room.

After much more searching and a few hilarious moments - well, they were hilarious to Steve - during which he inexplicably got attacked by the wallborne mattress, the second artifact was recovered; it was a chip, about the size of the tip of Steve's little finger, covered entirely with shiny little spots, a few tiny bits of wire coiled into itself. After he'd grabbed it as gently as he could, he'd simply stood there, holding it, attempting to understand how its delicate stature could produce such a strange conflict. Back when he was first in action, worry and conflict were dedicated entirely to the big things; people worried and killed over missiles, and tanks, and new weaponry. Now, people worried about something the size of a thumbnail with more brutality than he could remember humanity having. It was such a strange place for him to be in, and he hardly understood. Still, as long as they were making progress toward understanding what the hell was going on, he assumed they were doing pretty well.

The elevator dinged, which seemed like more of a warning to the room's inhabitants rather than a pleasant indicator of the elevator stopping, and Bruce stepped out, carrying that trash bag again, though it was much cleaner, and certainly a lot dryer. He looked around, and, seeing the two men entirely engaged in staring at what was in their hands, let himself have a small smile.

"I see you've located the offending signals," he said quietly, observing the two as they continued to think. Fury looked up from where he was meddling with the larger item, cataloging Bruce's appearance before looking back down at it. His expression was one of intense concentration, and so it was no surprise that Bruce would want to take at a look at what he was pondering over. So, he came closer to Fury, examining it over the man's shoulder as well as he could, given their height differences. Fury had gotten the top of the box off and was inspecting the machinery inside. Bruce's eyes scanned the mechanism quickly, taking note of every single visible component, and something suddenly clicked.

His eyes suddenly widened, and he reached for the box with one hand, swiftly and efficiently swapping the box for the garbage bag he'd been carrying, swooping just out of Fury's reach as he looked at it. "This seems to be able to do nothing but broadcast sonic waves," he said, his voice filled with something akin to wonder. Steve took a step toward him, his eyes now focused on that thing in the doctor's hands.

Fury seemed put out that he'd been left with the garbage bag, but he settled for looking at the doctor instead, not voicing his protestation partially due to his curiosity. Letting the doctor follow through with his epiphany seemed the closest they were going to get to true information.

Bruce beckoned them over quickly with one hand, and they complied, one man standing on each side of him. He seemed to disregard their proximity, which would have usually set the other guy off, and pointed to a spinning wheel that looked oddly like a filter. "This component here is used to produce the sonic sound that would obtain some desired effect," he said, and then he pointed to a small, cone-shaped piece. "This would have amplified the effect, using the transmitter here," he pointed to another piece which looked somewhat like an ear bud, "to reduce the sound into particle form."

"What does that mean?" Steve asked, somewhat excited. Dr. Banner looked at him, a small smile on his face.

"It means I think I know how Tony's suit was disassembled," he replied, looking back down at the sonic emitter. "Using the sound particles, the machine would have made it impossible for any alloy to remain together unless it was very large. Unluckily for Tony, his suit was assembled using small adhesive barriers, which the sound particles could easily sweep through. The suit literally rattled itself to pieces, leaving Tony completely vulnerable." He looked at Steve, then at Fury, as if gauging their reactions and their understanding of his hypothesis. Doing a double-take, he suddenly snatched the bag from Fury's hands, leaving him scowling even further.

"This bag," he said, holding it up for them to see, looking at Steve once again, "seems like it's made of plastic, but it isn't. It's made of a type of mesh consisting of aluminum and tar, and that leaves waves and signals bouncing around inside the bag while letting air escape. This bag was **made** to sink in the water, and was meant to keep Tony's suit underwater while disrupting the signal it gave off, leaving him completely untraceable." He handed Fury the box again - his patience was being tried, he could see it - and rolled the bag around, finally locating what he was looking for. "The only flaw in the plan was that the aluminum was stretched too thin, and the tar was susceptible to water; it snapped in one place and tore open, leaving Tony's suit out in the open for us to track and find."

"So Tony's suit was torn apart by this machine and was then forced into a bag and dropped in a river with the intention of never being found again?" Steve asked, and Bruce nodded. "So all we need now is the information regarding the smuggling ring and we could have a list of reasonable suspects."

"Hold on, hold on," Fury said, looking down at the bag and the box. "We don't even know about the chip yet. We can't form a hypothesis until we know what the chip is about. Doctor, would you take a look?" He held out his hand, gesturing to Steve, and Bruce followed the length of his arm, Steve holding up the chip before him. He took it, examining it as he gently turned it.

After a moment of silence, his expression changed from one of curiosity into understanding. "This chip can't be used for any kind of artificial intelligence or even for entering coordinates. Chips of this kind are used entirely for data storage. There has to be something in this chip that they wanted, but when they couldn't find it, they decided to take Tony. No doubt they believe he knows where it is." He turned it again before resuming his thought. "If it is still broadcasting the signal, it can only be assumed that it was programmed with a GPS signal to track it. I'm assuming their means of finding it are minuscule at best." He let it slide into his palm, closing his fingers around it. "I might be able to backtrack the signal to where its receptor might be, and it may give us Tony's location." Steve's stomach jumped into his chest, his heart taking residence in his throat. This was good. Yes, this was very very good.

"Do it, then," Fury said, the elevator dinging again. He chanced one quick glance over his shoulder before directing his attention to Bruce again. "Get back to us as soon as you can with the coordinates, Doctor." Dr. Banner nodded, and the three of them looked up to see Clint Barton moving toward them, the elevator doors sliding shut. In his hand was a manila envelope, which he promptly handed to Fury. Fury opened it, looking through the papers as Barton spoke.

"Here are all of the files that we could connect having to do with the smuggling ring, including the list of goods and the patrons there. All of the information we could extract during interrogation is there as well."

"Good, good," Fury said. "Let's see if we can link any specific names to the chip," he said, moving toward the counter. Bruce moved to the elevator again, and within seconds, he was headed down to the lab once more.

"Sir," Jarvis said smoothly, "Agent Romanoff is currently in the lab, and wanted me to inform you that the tracking process has begun."

"Thank you, Jarvis," Fury replied, spreading the papers in the folder out as far as he could, scanning over them. Quickly, he organized them as he saw fit, clearly in his element when it came to connecting relevant information. Meanwhile, Steve was left standing there with Barton, watching the director's back with a little bit of anxiety roiling in his stomach. He knew how cruel smuggling rings could be; he  **had** just taken down the ring in question. Hopefully, Tony was okay despite this. He was well-equipped in hand-to-hand combat without his suit, having to keep up a good fitness regimen just to wear the suit. Was that enough? Of course it was; he wasn't one to deny that the man had a certain skill when it came to self-preservation, regardless of what his habits claimed to the contrary.

"Hey, are you okay, Captain?"

Steve jumped, unused to the voice which usually said little more than what was required, and he looked at the agent next to him, whose eyes were trained on Steve. He was expressionless, as was his norm, but there was no doubt that he had spoken. His stance was his usual, arms crossed and eyes always watching, and Steve knew there was no point in lying.

He sighed, looking at the floor again. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said. Clint looked like he was ready to retort after a brief period of silence, but Steve made it easy for him. "I'm just worried about Mr. Stark."

Clint's eyebrow raised. "Worried about him?" Steve couldn't stop the heat that crept up his neck at the implications, and so he began to stutter, attempting to correct his wrong.

"Yes," he said, immediately shaking his head, tripping over himself to fix his mistake. "I mean, he's able to take care of himself, but it's a smuggling ring, and they're formidable at the very least, if not for being physically strong, then certainly for being cruel. Yes, he can take care of himself, I'm not saying he's weak, but I mean, sometimes when he gets nervous, he says stupid things that make a bad situation worse."

Clint didn't miss a beat. "He doesn't get nervous." Steve chuckled.

"Of course he does," he replied, his voice full of certainty. "Everyone gets nervous sometimes. He's no exception. He just has a funny way of showing it."

He missed Clint's next expression, too busy wringing his hands and staring, embarrassed, at the floor. "My, my," he said, something strange in his voice causing Steve to look up at him, only for him to meet that impassive wall of stoicism again. But there was something in his eyes that kept him looking. "You're very astute when it comes to human nature and people. Or is it just Mr. Stark?"

Steve's eyebrows furrowed. "It sounds like you're mocking me," he said, a slight hiss in his words, "and that is unappreciated." But to his surprise, Barton simply smiled.

"I didn't mean to," he said, making no move to comfort the offended captain beyond the tone of his voice and the small smile he sported. "I just find it quite charming that you're worried over someone you've clearly grown close to. To be honest, I had a distinct feeling you would not feel at home in this modern age. It simply pleases me to know that you've befriended the one of us who is perhaps the most futuristic in every sense of the word."

Steve shook his head, a small smile on his own face. "Oh, Mr. Stark and I are not friends." Clint tilted his head.

"You aren't?" Steve shook his head benevolently. "But you know him so well." Steve blinked, his eyes still looking at Clint. Both seemed slightly confused.

"No," Steve muttered slowly, trying to get a handle on the situation. "We rarely even talk." It was Barton's turn to blink. For a while, they stood in silence, both pondering over what they'd been told. Then, realization dawned on Barton's face, and Steve only wished he was so lucky. With all of the recent confusion, he could use an epiphany of his own.

"I see," Clint murmured to himself before smiling again, this time laying a hand on Steve's shoulder. This was getting strange, now. He was actually initiating human contact with someone other than Romanoff. "Maybe you need to re-evaluate your relationship with Mr. Stark. You may surprise yourself." With that, he moved over to Fury, looking over the papers, leaving a confused Captain Rogers wondering what on earth that could mean.

* * *

"Water, water, cold cold  **cold**  fucking water - oh, hello, Hans. It's pleasant to see you again."

A hard backhand across his face and Tony grunted, shaking his head, water running in his eyes. "Evidently not Hans, then," he said. "Is it - it is! By God, Hamilton, I thought for sure I'd never see you again."

"I'm going to fucking kill you."

"Then do it, already! If you keep up this pace my liver will beat you to it. I couldn't stand to see you disappointed, Hamilton."

Tony screamed, his arm once again pinioned by a very wild-looking man. Damn, this sensation never got old, did it? He seemed more and more on edge, the distinct smell of cologne wafting over him, as if the man hadn't showered and simply sprayed himself to seem clean. It was disturbing. He was losing himself looking for this chip. What disconcerted him most about this whole situation was the vision of Melusina standing in the corner. Her hair was a bit shorter - now it only fell to her shoulders - and it seemed a little lighter. Her sweater fit a little better, and seemed to take on a grayer color. Her eyes were widened in fear, the green subdued by a bit of blue on the edges. What the hell was wrong with her?

"I AM NOT HAMILTON TO YOU!  **WHO THE FUCK TOLD YOU MY NAME?!** "

Tony cried out, the veins in his neck straining beneath the skin. His eyebrows were knotted together so tightly he thought his face would split under the tension. His headache rushed back, and all of the sudden, he felt lower than he had in a long long while. "Gaa-aaaahh, just kill me, Hamilton," he cried, his body contorted as far as it could go under his bindings. After a tense moment of holding his arm down, Hamilton leaned down, and a sharp pain sprung in his neck. He screamed, squirming until Hamilton released his skin. He could feel the throbbing where the skin split, the hot blood rushing down his neck.

"Death is too good for you, Stark," he said, and he spit in Tony's face, his saliva mixed with Tony's blood oozing slowly down his uninjured cheek. "I'm sending Hans in to do his job on you, and when he's done, I want answers, or so help me, I will keep you alive as long as I desire." He pointedly glared at Tony, and Tony defiantly looked back. Then, Hamilton rushed to the door, flinging it open with that annoying clanging noise. From the light outside, Tony could see the bodies of Hans and Hamilton swapping as one came in and the other rushed out. The door slammed shut, and Tony lost sight of Hans until his silhouette once again appeared under the light.

He ran his hand up Tony's pant leg, up over his hip - Tony breathed a small sigh of relief that he skipped over fondling his genitals in any way - and onto his bare chest, tracing a finger over his pectoral muscle before trailing it up his shoulder and curling down his arm, pressing insistently into the wound in his arm. He hissed, jerking his head away. "Hey, how 'bout we stop poking that, okay?" he offered, his voice tight under the weight of his pain.

As usual, Hans didn't hear him. "You appear to have been a naughty boy, Tony," he said, leaning in close and caressing his injured cheek as he was wont to do. "Hamilton isn't pleased with you."

"The name-dropping on your part probably didn't help," he retorted, feeling bitter about having been caused an injury by Hans' lack of carefulness. His throat was raw from his screaming, and all that had happened to him in these past two minutes could be entirely attributed to Hans and his stupid lax morals. Hans simply smiled, moving over to his table.

"Regardless of my indiscretions," he began, fiddling with stuff on the table - he'd hate tapping metal for the rest of his life, he decided - "Hamilton has ordered me to punish you for not relinquishing any information you have on the chip. He requested I do something...  _ **special**_ for your making him feel like a fool. It's a sore shame, it is; I was just beginning to like you, too."

Tony didn't hear any of it. He was too busy looking at the drastically-changed Melusina, whose face had grown pale with sudden realization. She backed her way into the corner, pressed against the wall, watching Hans with wide eyes. She seemed to know what he was going to do, for she looked at Tony, her eyes brimming with tears.

"Get out," Tony said to her despite himself. He knew she wasn't real, but that didn't stop him from caring, and quite frankly, he didn't know if she could handle it. Hell, he didn't even know if **he** could handle it. He was tired, his throat was raw, he hadn't had water in a long while, and he was broken in more places than he wanted, stained with his own blood and the saliva of an insane man obsessed with one object. A man who had lost everything was one not to be tampered with, and Tony was pushing his buttons more than he should have. He knew this. He knew what was at stake, and he knew this was only going to get worse.

He wondered vaguely about Pepper, and if she missed him. He wondered if the Avengers were doing anything to try to find him. Of course Natasha is beside herself with worry -  _not_ , he thought, amused - and Bruce is no doubt running diagnostics on that wrecked room. Fury is probably furious - an analogy he  **never** got tired of making - and Barton is stoic as ever, not really giving a damn. And Steve...

"Get out?"

Tony looked around, trying to locate the voice, and was, for some reason, surprised to see Hans standing there. He looked suddenly very serious, and the look didn't suit him. The torture, before, was playful, even if it was excruciating. But the look on his face said those times had come and gone, and it was all because Tony opened his mouth.  _I really ought to learn not to do that._

Hans' eyebrow twitched. "Why, Tony. That was quite rude." He leaned in low, surprisingly avoiding the arm. That left all of Tony's focus on his manic face, and he didn't know if he could keep himself together. "Why should I take heed to what you have to suggest?"

Tony looked at him, really taking in the entirety of his existence. He was here, torturing Tony, bending his body in unbelievable ways, trying to break his mind. All of this was for a man who was paying him, but it wasn't about the money. It was about paying his wife's medical bills. It was about making sure she recovered from cancer. It was about Melusina.

He decided on it. He was probably going to break here. He might as well get the worst of it over with. He'd activate this man's berserk button.

"Because Melusina is dead."

He could physically  _ **feel**_ Hans as he flinched, his entire body rigid against Tony. His eyes grew wide, his mouth tightly shut. He'd gotten through to him at the very least, and on a serious note, nonetheless. He decided to try it again. "Lonnell, Melusina is dead. There's nothing you can do about it. Hamilton is probably just using the money he promised you for his own purposes."

Hans wasn't moving, but Tony could feel his breath across his face. He finally blinked, and then his mouth dropped open. "But... But he promised..." His voice was lost, his heart breaking. Tony could feel it. He needed to appeal to this more.

"He might have been funding her care at first, but when she died, he decided not to tell you she was gone. You were too good to pass up. He couldn't give you back to your wife, even if she **was** gone. Don't you see, Lonnell? He bought Lonnell so he could keep Hans!"

Hans pushed himself up off of Tony, pacing back and forth in the dark, tugging at his hair and moaning in his hands. He moved quickly through the room, murmuring to himself, his eyes wide, his hands shaking. He was trying to sort it all out in his head. Tony knew this from experience, and was reminded of late nights in his bedroom with a bottle of whiskey sitting nearby.

He froze. Out of nowhere, Hans just froze, one hand on his forehead, his eyes staring into the darkness. Melusina was watching him, her eyes staring at him unblinkingly. Then, he lowered his hand. He turned toward Tony. He stood up straighter.

And he hit Tony as hard as he could.

His head lashed backward, hitting the table with a loud bang, and he knew his nose was bleeding. He cringed, his body tightening unpleasantly. The way the bindings had bitten into his arm didn't help matters at all. His arm was pressed down again, harder than it ever had been before, and he screamed, his hair being grasped hard by Hans and yanked forward. He opened his eyes, looking into the truly terrifying gaze of Hans.

" **You're lying,** " he ground out, his teeth grit. He said no more, instead leaning forward and biting the other side of Tony's neck. Tony screamed, the fingers gripping his hair tugging harder, forcing his chin high. He pulled back, spitting off to the side before headbutting Tony right where his bandage still sat. He was dizzy, in pain, his vision blurry, and he didn't know what was happening, and that was the scary part. He'd always been painfully aware of what was going on, and so he knew what to expect most of the time. But things were happening too fast now, and he couldn't keep track of them.

A thick pain brought him entirely to lucidity, and his body sparked in his first true twinge of fear. The pain was erupting somewhere near the arc reactor, near the top. The pain spread, and he could barely feel blood flowing down his chest, his cries lost in the darkness, his eyes unable to truly see. There was a red light somewhere in the room, as if he was being sucked into hell, and there were shouts, and suddenly it all hurt too much. He cried, twisting against his bonds, tears trailing down his cheeks, his heart threatening to burst. This was worse than the feeling of shrapnel attempting to envelop his heart. This was worse than terrorists. This was worse than what even hell could bring.

He screamed until his throat grew hoarse, until his voice left him. It was long, strenuous stretches of complete pain. He was aching, burning, shriveling,  **dying**.

A searing pain in his temple, and suddenly he was gone.

* * *

Fury and Barton had been at sorting those papers for a few hours when Fury had suddenly shouted. Right afterward, Jarvis informed them that the tracking process was at eighty-eight percent. Steve's head had shot up from where it was, bent to look down at a broom he was using to sweep up debris. Fury grabbed two papers, swirling around the counter to face outward into the room.

"Jarvis," he said, his voice more of a demand rather than a request, "could you please connect me directly to Dr. Banner, please?"

"Certainly, sir," he replied, and after a brief silence, the doctor's voice came over the intercom. "Hello, Director."

Fury wasted no time with the niceties. "I have an update on who the kidnapper may be."

There was a pregnant pause before someone spoke again. "Who do you think it is?"

Fury gazed down at his papers, as if making sure he had connected the information correctly. Then, he said, very surely, "Earl Hamilton. He's a blackmail specialist and an information gatherer. It says here he rarely visits the black market, but when he does, deals entirely in data and information. All I need is a witness testimony that he was at that gathering and we may have a winner."

"Alright."

Fury turned his gaze, then, to Steve. Grasping one of his two papers, he moved around the counter, his eye never meeting Steve's, until, finally, he stopped in front of him. He held up the paper next to his face, still looking at Steve. "Do you recognize this man?" he asked, his voice serious and deep. Steve looked at Fury for a few more moments before looking at the page, his gaze taking in the man on the paper. He was a thin-faced man with high cheekbones and thin lips. His eyes were hard and cold, a rusty silver color, and he seemed vicious.

He thought back to that night, when they'd broken up the men who had been selling pieces of S.H.I.E.L.D. property. They had burst in with the intent of scaring them into a frenzy, and that had worked entirely fine. They'd begun fleeing like ants, many heading straight for the doors. Yes, now that he thought of it, he had seen a man somewhat like the one on the paper escaping with two others in tow...

He nodded, his features hardened with certainty, his eyes meeting Fury's once again. "I'm sure I saw him that night."

Fury stared at him a moment before releasing a smile, and Steve knew then that it was going to be okay. He walked, quickly and with purpose, back to the counter, and looked up at the ceiling. "Jarvis," he asked, "could you give us an update on the tracking process, please?"

"Tracking is at 94%, sir. The area has been narrowed to a twenty-mile radius."

Doctor Banner then spoke, still present on the intercom. "You could leave for the area now and spare the risk of arriving too late. When the final results come in, I can give you the exact coordinates and you can deviate from your route to get there."

Fury's smile grew wider, and Steve recognized a thirst for blood in it. "I'll take Rogers, Barton and Romanoff. You give us any new information you receive, including any you get about Hamilton. We'll be there as soon as we can." He started for the elevator, and Barton followed. Steve dropped his broom and headed there himself, ready for anything.

"I'll program the coordinates to appear on your radar the moment we receive them, sir."

"Thank you, Jarvis," Fury said, and the elevator doors shut, heading down. Everyone slipped their ear buds back in before the room settled into tense silence. This was it, Steve thought, jaw set. This was the moment he had been waiting for all of two days. He was finally going to get Tony back, and discover the people who did this.

His brow furrowed. Wasn't that supposed to be the other way around? And they weren't 'getting him back' at all; at least, he wasn't. How could he get someone  **back** if he never  **had** them in the first place? That was quite an irrational way to word things. He shook his head as the elevator doors opened. No, he was going to fight. He was going to take out all of his pent-up frustrations on a bunch of people who were thieves and kidnappers.

As he revved his engine, he felt sick to his stomach, for try as he might to avoid it, he knew he was going to enjoy this a little too much.

* * *

He was woken by a strict pain that he had never felt before. Well, hadn't felt in the time that he'd been there. He felt sharp pain followed by a thick, throbbing feeling encompassing him entirely. It wasn't the kind of pain inflicted with retribution. It was the kind inflicted when healing.

He opened his eyes, following the shadow hovering above him to see a slightly-tanned face, long hair pulled back into a ponytail. He recognized the shape of his face, even if he didn't speak.

He couldn't ignore the relief he felt. "Antonio," he whispered, his voice completely broken. He allowed himself a small smile, despite his broken lip. "You're so wonderfully human."

"As are you, I see," he replied, his hands quickly moving over his arm. Something felt off about this. Why would Antonio heal him? Especially since they were so close; he was sincerely hoping to die soon. It made no sense. He tutted. "Antonio, did you guys give up so soon? After all you've done?" he asked, closing his eyes and attempting to wet his lips. "That's not good sportsmanship. You nearly had me."

"This isn't about you, Stark," Antonio replied, and he heard a faint snipping sound, but he felt no pain. "It's about Hans."

Tony opened his eyes, raising his aching neck to look at Antonio. "What about him?" Next time he saw him, he'd have to tell him the name actually  **was**  fearsome. He was a good Torture Tech. Very vigilant. A bit touchy, though.

Antonio scoffed, his hands moving up to Tony's collarbone. Tony flinched, groaning, as the hands worked delicately around the area, only adding to his confusion. "You fucking broke him."

"You know, it's counterproductive to tend to one's wounds when you're essentially trying to break them. The whole point of 'breaking' someone is so they are incapable of 'repairing' themselves. You didn't go to torture school, did you?" Antonio's words finally sank in. He looked at Antonio, afraid to look and see what he'd done to his arm. "How did I do that?"

"You talked about the truth about Melusina," Antonio replied, reclining away from Tony to dip his hand in something and rub it on Tony's stomach and chest. It burned in certain places, and he hissed, but a cooling feeling swiftly crept over him, and he felt more comfortable, and yet more weary, than he had in a long time. "Hamilton was trying to hide that from him. That's what was on the chip, man; medical records. He was going to blackmail Hans into working for him to pay off his debt - which I thought he was already doing - and was going to track it using that chip. Alas, the best laid plans..." He sighed, reaching for something. Tony sighed, looking around. He noticed the room seemed less dark around him, and that Melusina was still in that corner, still hiding in the dark.

A box was settled on his hips, and Tony recoiled, shifting as much as he could away from it. His arm hit the table, and for one split second, he expected excruciating amounts of pain, but it was only a small jolt that ebbed away as swiftly as it came. He looked down, surprised to see his arm in a cast, splinted so it would heal correctly. He was too distracted by that to notice there was a needle in his arm before it was too late. Tony watched as the syringe was emptied before it was removed, and replaced once again in its case. Tony was about to ask, afraid that he was going to be given a new shapeshifting friend, when he realized something very important that he probably should have noticed earlier.

He was sitting up. Completely free.

He looked at Antonio. "You just fucking splinted my arm. You rubbed my tummy and gave me butterflies. And you shot me up with something, God knows what" - "Painkillers," Antonio interjected - "and now, you're letting me go."

Antonio nodded. "There's some crazy shit going on with Hans and Hamilton. The hammer's missing for a reason, as is the blowtorch and the iron. I figured the best thing to do would be to get you out of here."

Tony narrowed his eyes, not liking this. "To where? Your top secret basement of doom? Your cellar of pain? Hell?"

"Home, Tony. I want you to go home."

Tony didn't buy it - wouldn't have bought it, had it not been for the earnest look in Antonio's eyes that he'd seen before, like when they'd first met, and he had been asking Tony about the arc reactor. Never once had he inflicted pain upon Tony. He was asked to leave the room if that was even going to happen. He may have very well just saved his arm by splinting it. He wasn't a bad guy.

He really wanted him to go home. Tony could've cried, but he didn't cry. He doesn't cry.

"Am I crying?"

Antonio cocked his head again. "No," he said, his tone suggesting confusion.

"Well, good," Tony replied, moving to get off the table. Antonio instantly grasped his good arm, helping him to his feet. He wobbled at first, unused to walking due to being strapped down, but the ability to stretch was gorgeous. After the initial dizziness and a few near-collapses, Tony was walking by himself again.

"I'll go scout ahead, see if the coast is clear," Antonio said. "There may be blood in the halls, so be careful not to slip." With that, he left the room, leaving Tony alone to recuperate.

Well, almost alone. There was still Melusina, curled in her corner, though she still looked different - in fact, she looked even more different. Her hair was completely short now, the shade a sandy blonde instead of her dark curls. Her sweater was much tighter, a deeper shade of gray bordering on blue. She was curled into herself in the corner, her head buried in her arms. Tony approached quietly, kneeling in front of her and relishing in the ability to do so.

"Melusina?" he asked, looking at her, but he got no response. She just remained there, curled up and looking frightfully alone. He sighed, reaching out to her, surprised he could actually place his hand on her shoulder. He assumed the drug still hadn't worn off, though it seemed like it was, due to her changing constantly. "Melusina, I'm sorry you had to see all that." She raised her head, and he gasped, recoiling and, thankfully, landing on his good arm.

The face that had looked up at him had not been the face of Melusina, but of Steve. His eyes were a deeper shade of blue than he remembered, but perhaps that was because they were bogged down with tears. Now he knew why the sweater was growing so tight, his muscles rippling under the muscle shirt he wore underneath as he uncurled himself, looking at Tony, still.

"Why did they hurt you so much?" he asked, and the tone broke Tony's heart. He didn't know that Steve could get to him so easily. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

"I..." he began, but he found no good way to put it, so he simply allowed himself to recoil into silence. Sometimes words weren't enough, and he only wished he could see that better sometimes. It hurt too much to try to explain right now, anyway, because Steve's eyes were so full of pain it was killing him.

Understanding was the last thing on his mind right now.

Steve reached out, leaning more toward Tony, and gently grasped Tony's cheek in his palm. His skin was soothing, warm, and Tony found himself leaning into it, his eyes closing. Right now, he blamed the painkillers. It's not like he found Cap comforting or anything.

"Tony, I'm so sorry."

He nuzzled his palm, a smile on his face and his heart aflame. "Don't be," he replied. "It wasn't your fault, Cap. I'm just... glad to see you." He'd never admit that to the real Cap, let alone anybody. But it was in truth. He did love seeing a familiar face, even if it wasn't real. He ignored his fleeting hope that maybe it could be real. He was high. He couldn't take himself seriously.

"...I'm glad to see you too."

Tony opened his eyes, looking up, and was surprised to see the Captain smiling at him through his tears. Through his drug-addled haze he reminisced slightly on what smiles did to him as a whole before he gave one back, relishing in the comfort the relief on Steve's face gave him. As long as he wasn't worried, Tony wouldn't worry.

The door opened, and he turned away to see Antonio return. He bit back the disappointment he felt as the Captain's hand retracted from him. Antonio looked winded, his eyes wide and his face red. "We gotta move. We have company,  _hermano_." With that, he disappeared again. Tony turned to say goodbye to Steve, but he was gone; all that was left was the empty corner. Biting his lip, he stood, looking down at the space which once held his coping mechanism before looking at the door. Then, his brow set, and somewhere in his head, ACDC started blaring.

He was on his own now, and he'd never been more ready in his life.


	5. Forbearance

The three men were driving around the same area repeatedly, just waiting for the coordinates. Fury's car hummed in front of Steve as he followed it aimlessly through the evolved streets, taking in every area his eyes would allow. This waiting was uncurling something thick and heavy in his stomach, dripping with something oddly like apprehension and...  **readiness.** As if the day would never come where he could finally pulverize the kidnapper - Hamilton, he remembered; the name was burned into his brain - and its arrival would only bring him swift relief. Steve supposed it was for the best, then, that he was going on this mission with them. He needed something on which he could release his pent-up stress, and even if it was a human body, well, the kind of deserved it anyway. He shook his head, trying to get such thoughts out. He couldn't be thinking like that. He was Captain America, fighting against injustice for the good of the masses, for love and for country. He wasn't fighting this for vengeance. He was securing another important life in the defense of the nation's progress. He was rescuing Tony Stark.

He couldn't help the sliver of pain that thrust its way into his subconscious at the mention of that name. Tony. He had been gone for two days now, and Steve couldn't say he was faring well in his absence. It was as if a light had been switched off, and all Steve could do to defend himself in the darkness was obsess over his return. He felt strange, disoriented, and even Clint's advice of re-evaluating their relationship simply left him stagnated in more confusion. What was he supposed to be looking for? What had changed between himself and Tony that could constitute as a reason for what he was feeling? This treacherous feeling of helplessness, of regret at not keeping Tony safe, of despair that things may not go right -

He blinked, hard. His eyes were locked on his handlebars, and he nearly missed the turn Fury took.  _Oh_ , he thought.  _ **Oh**_ _._

"Director Fury," Jarvis' voice said, and Steve pressed a hand to his helmet, pushing it closer to his head so he could better hear Jarvis. "We have the coordinates for Tony's location. I am currently uploading them to your city-grid GPS, sir."

"Thank you, Jarvis. We're on our way there." The black car ahead of him sped up, and he did so in turn, following not too far behind. His brow set in determination, he guided his bike behind Fury's car, the streets winding into one another as they wove through the intricate maze of the city. He was ready to get there, ready to take back what was rightfully his.

They wound down the city roads, until they finally took a turn that led them to a deserted area. Fury continued to lead them further out into the openness, when he suddenly stopped his car. Steve pulled over, following suit. Fury got out of the car as Steve removed his helmet, looking at him. Barton, too, got out of the car, his face stony and impassive, followed easily by Natasha.

Fury approached Steve, his expression hard. There were a few moments of silence amid the four of them before Fury spoke. "The fine establishment holding Tony is just down the road," he said, and Steve looked over his shoulder at the building standing in the distance. "We're going to approach on foot, naturally, to avoid being spotted. The objective is this: rescue Tony Stark at all costs, and avoid killing Earl Hamilton. He must be brought back under S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, alive and nowhere near dying. Understood?" His gaze turned to Captain Rogers, Black Widow and Hawkeye respectively, earning a nod from each. Then, with a small nod of his own, he turned around and began walking in the general direction of the household. Steve followed, his eyes taking on a darker hue as he readied his shield. The bitter tang of resentment stung harshly on his tongue, but he wouldn't acknowledge it. Until his dying day, he'd say this was for S.H.I.E.L.D., even though he knew that wasn't true.

* * *

The hallway had indeed been stained with blood, though it wasn't as bad as Tony had first thought. Still, the acrid stench had gotten him to stumble a bit, though the drugs and fatigue could have had something to do with it. Bracing himself on the wall with his good arm, he moved down the hall, following Antonio, who wasn't too far ahead. The Spaniard was peeking around the corner of the hall before looking back at him, gesturing for him to follow as he rounded it. Tony did as he was told, following Antonio through the place, and for a while, it seemed eerily haunted. There was literally no sign of anybody currently there besides Antonio and himself, though there were signs of their conflict written on the walls and with potential weapons left on the floors. Tony tried not to pay too close attention to the tools littered about them, too focused on walking to pay them any heed.

For a while, the world was silent, their only companions the fuzzy little lint pieces floating under gaps of sunlight. It wasn't until they grew closer to what Tony could only assume was a portion of the building above land - explaining the lack of natural light for the majority of their journey - that they heard noises, and assumed the worst.

Antonio lingered at a corner longer than expected, and Tony crashed into his back quietly, a grunt dying on his lips as he stilled. A sharp pain trilled in his arm, and he clutched it loosely, attempting to get the surging feelings to calm down. He looked up at Antonio, but he was looking around the corner, his eyes trained to one specific spot, a cat waiting to pounce. Tony watched his back nervously, his eyes flitting around to examine his surroundings. After a tense moment of silence, Antonio turned to him and nodded, and then made to quickly but quietly round the corner.

A loud bang sent him rushing back, pushing at Tony with both of his hands, trying to obscure him around the corner's bend. At first, Tony pushed back, attempting to try and see what he saw, but he relented when his head began to throb painfully at the sudden adrenaline rush.

Heavy footsteps sounded out down the hallway, thick panting accompanying them. Antonio was caught where he was, standing in the open around that corner. Tony was only a few feet behind him, his breathing silenced as well as it could be. He watched Antonio, a feeling of anxiety overwhelming him.

The panting slowed, and then was interrupted by a chuckle, making it pick up again. "Antonio," Hamilton's voice said, and he sniffed, the sound wet and unpleasant. Tony gripped the uninjured part of his arm, trying to even his breath. He thought he was hyperventilating. "Thank God it's you, Antonio. I can't find Hans anywhere. The motherfucker has been spending all day trying to kill me." He took a step, and Antonio stayed where he was. Hamilton chuckled again, and then sniffed again, but the sound was muffled, as if being wiped on a sleeve. "He was screaming something about Melusina being dead. You know anything about that?"

Antonio shook his head. "Not me," he replied, looking around warily, as if he was more afraid of Hans than he was of Hamilton. "I don't know how he found out about Melusina."

"No?" Hamilton asked, and his voice was both skeptical and menacing. He took a few more lazy steps toward Antonio, but he didn't move. Tony thought the smart thing to do was to show at least a little bit of fear, gain some footing, and run for it, but Antonio was unmovable. Tony looked at him, noticing his features in the light, how his squared jaw was set in stone, and how his dark eyes were narrowed because of the blinding light. He didn't understand why the Spaniard would simply stand there while imminent death trudged toward him. It made little sense in regards to self-preservation -

\- but that wasn't what the Spaniard was trying to achieve. Tony looked at his body language, his chest slightly puffed, his arms akimbo, and suddenly understood. He wasn't trying to appear strong just for his own sake; he was being a literal barrier between Tony and Hamilton. He **truly** wanted Tony to go home, and was willing to put even his own life in danger in order to achieve this end. He was endangering himself to save the life of another. Just like Yinsen.

"Surely you must know something about this, Antonio," Hamilton's voice uttered, a thick, guttural sound that rumbled in the broken atmosphere, "because I told you about it a long time ago. I told you, and nobody else." His footsteps were getting closer; Tony's mind raced as he began formulating a plan. "You were the only one in the entirety of this compound that knew what was going on with Hans' late wife.  **You** , Antonio. And you betrayed my trust." There was a quick silence before something rattled loudly, and Tony flinched. Antonio was still stiff, straight as a board, a rock in the middle of the hallway. " **I FUCKING TRUSTED YOU, AND YOU DELIBERATELY BETRAYED ME!** "

"I did no such thing."

A few more steps were taken, and Antonio was suddenly seized, yank forward by the shirt collar hanging just below his throat. His arms unlatched themselves from his front, hanging limply at his sides. His head was tilted back, away from Hamilton's snarling face. Tony was almost visible to him, but not quite. It would take a little more for Hamilton to see him hiding there.

"All this time, I've been feeding you, paying you, buying your child's school supplies, et cetera, et fucking cetera. But you've been acting like you were paid to go off on a little adventure of your own, here." His voice was deep and low, but it took a mocking turn now. "'Ooh, I have a PhD, why don't I just heal the infected wound on Tony Stark's forehead?' Did I ask you to heal the bastard? No, you just went on your own merry way, defying me at every turn, healing him when you felt like it and  **not when I asked you**."

There was a thick, heady moment of complete silence, before his voice piped up again, this time, an octave higher, and full of remorse, shame, and pain. "I had faith in you. I put you through college, let you be the doctor you wanted to be. All I asked in return was you working part time for me, off the books, and you said yes. I just wanted a working operation. That's all I wanted. I gave  **you**  all you wanted. And every chance you got, you betrayed me. You hurt me."

It was at this moment that Tony's nose registered the smell of something cold. It wasn't cold, though; merely the smell was. He was overwhelmed with a sickening warmth, the kind you feel when you're sweating the humid summer away. And the smell. It was hot, yes, but it smelled cold. It smelled like distance. Like metal.

His breath caught just behind his nose. It smelled like blood.

He turned, slowly, his head shifting from its look at Antonio's side to what was sitting behind him. What he saw didn't shock him, but it didn't do anything to calm his nerves, either.

Lonnell's head was even, his chin tilted down to the floor. Finally able to see him fully in the light, he looked younger than Tony had imagined. His short black hair was messy, hanging in limp curls all around his head. His eyes were silver, almond-shaped and naive-looking at first glance. His lips were thin, but defined. In one hand, which was stained with blood, he held a long, thin piece of iron, and in the other, a torch blower. His eyes were unwavering, staring straight at Tony, and Tony, being slightly drugged and somewhat accepting of death, simply stared at him back. He knew the shape this man left him in. He knew how easily and readily he would kill him. And after drudging up Melusina, he wouldn't be surprised if he  **was**  killed by the psychopath.

But Lonnell simply stared at him. His face was expressionless, his body unmoving. Hamilton ranted on and on in the background, occasionally shaking Antonio, but neither of them were paying attention. Tony simply looked at Lonnell, and Lonnell simply looked back.

Then, he leaned forward. Not releasing the iron, he raised his hand to Tony's face, stopping just before he touched the skin. When neither one flinched, he continued in, gently brushing his knuckles against the bruised skin of his cheek. He followed the line of his cheekbone before descending into the sallow dip of his cheek, brushing his fingertips in the scruff just under his jaw until he hit his chin. He grasped his chin with his forefinger and thumb, the iron cold against his skin despite the hair between them. Lonnell leaned in closer, shifting himself until he could gently place his lips upon Tony's, kissing him gently and quietly. Tony sat still, something in him leaving him completely defeated, unable to revolt against this, or fight it. Lonnell pulled away after a moment, his expression the same. He released Tony's chin, and there they were, staring at one another again.

And then, Lonnell smiled. It wasn't disarming, or disconcerting; it was a simple smile, one that Tony reciprocated in kind. His lip split again and his cheek ached, but Lonnell's eyes flashed with understanding. They waited a moment. And then, Lonnell finally stood. The spell was broken.

Lonnell wasted no time. He flipped the iron in his hand, smashing himself close to the wall. Gazing harshly at Antonio's side, he continued flipping the iron. Antonio's eyes glanced over for a brief millisecond, and, luckily, it went unnoticed by Hamilton. Something passed over Lonnell's face, and he flipped the iron once more before crouching low and running.

He smashed into Antonio, ripping him from Hamilton's hands, and before he even had time to react, Hamilton was hammered in the cheek by the blunt end of a torch blower. He crumpled, his body reeling as he staggered backwards, and Tony's head spun with the sick crack of his cheekbone collapsing. Antonio rose from where he had landed - having struggled to release himself from the debris that trapped him on the floor - and ran to Tony, grasping his good arm, gently but insistently tugging him up. Tony staggered to his feet, pressing his weight into Antonio, and they rounded the corner.

Lonnell had Hamilton pinned to the floor, but he was struggling as hard as he possibly could. His fists lashed out into Lonnell's stomach, and Lonnell doubled over, taking a blow to the face. His head lashed back, his nose spurting blood, and he screamed, an insane, dark noise, lunging at the man underneath him, grasping his neck with both hands. Hamilton was smart, though; he attacked Lonnell's face instead of grabbing his wrists, and Lonnell grunted and screamed beneath his hands, which were scratching his cheeks, leaving rivulets of blood running down his face.

Tony realized too late that he had been frozen in shock and that Antonio was still pushing him to move. And when he realized what he had to do, he moved, alright; he walked quickly to Hamilton, and before he could free one of his hands, Tony kicked him in the face. Hamilton's neck popped with a sick crack, his damaged cheekbone breaking further. Lonnell laughed, looking up at Tony, and even when he was bloodstained, the look still hadn't left his eye. Hamilton moaned, his eyes flicking around, as if he couldn't get his bearings. Tony looked around the room before running to a corner and picking up two tools, returning to Lonnell's side and handing them to him. Quietly as he could, with Antonio's eyes on him as well, Tony murmured, "the eyes."

Lonnell's expression was one of complete comprehension. He nodded, his quarry stirring beneath him, and as he started the torch, Antonio grasped Tony and tugged him, heading for the door. Tony understood; it wasn't that he wanted to leave. On the contrary, he wanted to watch Hamilton burn for what he had done to him, how he had betrayed both Antonio and Lonnell. But he understood that Antonio did not enjoy the intricacies of torture.

_Just as well. It's best if he's left with the Torture Tech._

* * *

As he entered the building, Steve registered the sound of tormented screaming.

The sound of screams was nothing new to him; having been in the war that he was, he was accustomed to such sounds coming from the battlefield. But this bloodcurdling scream was from a masculine voice, and it made him shiver. It could have been Tony. Chances are, it  **was** Tony. He moved as stealthily as he could through the hallways, following the source of the screams, his brow set in determination, his upper lip moistened with fear. He brandished his shield before him, as if afraid psychopaths would jump from the ceiling or from around every corner, determined to kill him.

He moved down a hallway, noticing the bloodstains on the wall, and the screams were closer. He inched toward an open doorway, certain the screams were coming from the other side. After waiting a moment, he peered around the corner, his body freezing in shock.

A man was sitting on his haunches, his arms dropping to his sides. In the arm that he could see from his angle, he could make out a glowing piece of metal. A man was moving underneath him, squirming, his hands on his face, sobbing and screaming, trying to curl into himself. The heels of his palms were pressing into his eyes, his body convulsing, something goopy and sticky running down his cheeks and smearing on his hands, dripping on the floor.

Steve moved into the room, and as the man's eyes shot to him, his shot to the man on the floor; it was with relief that he realized it wasn't Tony. The man was far too tall, even lying prostrate and curled into himself, and his hair was lighter, if only by a shade.

"Iron Man went outside," a voice croaked, and he looked to the man with the glowing metal rod. He was staring down at his victim, his face expressionless. From where he stood, Steve could see the torch in the other hand, laying innocently in his palm and against the ground. The image was foreboding.

Steve measured his words before he spoke. "And this man?" he asked, hoping the question would be obvious. He wasn't surprised when his head shot back and he laughed, but he was a little disturbed when the man reached down and began pulling at the man's wrists. "C'mon, Hammy," he cooed, tugging at his hands harder and harder with every subsequent movement. The arms didn't budge, the man moaning and whimpering to himself, and so the man with the blowtorch began cuffing him right across the side of his face. Like magic, the hands flew up to stop the barrage of fists, and Steve nearly recoiled at the sight of the man's eyes burned out and congealing down the sides of his face, completely melted. He was bleeding profusely, but the maniac didn't seem to care.

"Hamilton's just shy," he said, his arms attempting to still his victim's flailing appendages, and he looked up at Steve as if he hadn't just ruined this man's livelihood. And then he recalled the name. Hamilton. The professional informant. The man from the secret circles. The bastard who stole Tony. His target.

"He's Hamilton."

The man didn't miss Steve's tone, for his smile grew wider, his black hair obscuring his rising eyebrows. "Mmhmm." His pupils grew wider, his irises darker. "He stole my wife from me." He looked back to the whimpering body beneath him. "And Antonio's freedom." He leaned in closer, his face dark. "And Tony's arm."

Steve's blood ran cold in his veins, turning to ice and throbbing in his temples. "His arm?" he inquired, and the man didn't flinch at the tone. He continued staring at Hamilton, his eyes venomous.

"He broke it. He made me break it more. And he's so hurt."

"Where is he?" He didn't recognize his own voice; it was monstrous, dark, menacing. He didn't want to be this way. Captain America did not stand for vengeance. He was supposed to stand for liberty, not fear. What was Tony doing to him?

"Antonio bandaged him, took him outside," he said, his words thick and congealing in his throat. "He's totally safe. Antonio's the doctor, after all."

"Wh-who are you?" whimpered Hamilton, still trapped beneath his assailant. His hands began reaching out, his eyes gaping holes in his head, and Steve didn't recoil, even though the humanity in him did. He had shifted into being the soldier, and so he was unafraid, watching as this man desperately reached for him.

"He's  **nobody** ," the assailant hissed, pushing his arms back to his sides. Hamilton groaned, struggling against him, but Steve could tell he was weak. He reckoned he only got this sudden burst of energy from the sound of some foreign voice; the prospect of help would send any human, or even any animal, into a frenzy. "Hamilton,  **he's nobody**. You're hallucinating."

Hamilton paid his words no mind; he struggled, pulling away from his hands and trying to move in the direction of Steve's voice. The man with the metal rod scolded him, tried more forcefully to get him to cease, but Hamilton started bawling, screaming. "Help me! Oh, **God, _help me_!** "

It was at that precise moment that Black Widow stepped in and had her gun trained on the man with the metal rod. Her eyes were blazing, her hands steady, face stoic. When she spoke, her voice was even and trained. "Drop the rod." Wordlessly, the assailant complied, raising both hands in the air, the iron hitting the floor with a clang. The blowtorch was abandoned at his side. She jerked her gun in an upward motion, her eyes still tearing into him fiercely. "Get up."

Again, without protest, he rose to his feet, turning and stepping away from Hamilton, his arms still raised high. He stared at Natasha, and Natasha stared back; both of them were the picture of calm, their faces expressionless, albeit in different ways. Where Natasha's face showed a hint of intensity, her captive's expression was indifferent. Hamilton whimpered, his hands reaching in the air toward Natasha's voice. He was vulnerable and weak; Steve didn't want to think about how much it pleased him right now.

"Captain." Natasha's voice broke through his shroud of thought, and he looked to her. Her eyes were still trained on her captive, but she was speaking to Steve. "Could you please pick up Mr. Hamilton?" It sounded like a request, but Steve knew it wasn't, and he wasn't about to argue with her. He moved over to Hamilton, kneeling and scooping him up with both arms. He yelped, wrapping his arms around Steve's neck, and it took all his self-restraint not to drop him out of menace. He looked back to Natasha.

She jerked her gun toward the door, glaring at the man she had trained at gunpoint. "After you." He complied readily, slowly heading out, placing his hands behind his head. He led them down the hallways and back outside, everyone silent as the grave. Steve tried not to think about the evil the man in his arms had done. Instead, he let his thoughts wander to Tony, who, if what the man said was true, was waiting outside for him, completely safe from further harm. Steve let himself hope that maybe, maybe, this was the end.

* * *

The first breath of fresh air that Tony had gotten in a long while was absolutely devastating; he nearly collapsed into tears, so powerful was the feeling. Even the momentary blindness from the sun's light, or the annoying pollen floating in the air, tickling a sneeze in his sinuses, couldn't wrest the exultation he felt from him. For the first time in what felt like a long time, he finally felt free. Truly free.

"Antonio," he breathed quietly, his eyes still adjusting to the light. By now, he could make out the blurred shapes of plants surrounding the building. "I haven't been outside for a while." Not that Tony was the outdoorsy type, but he usually did pop his head outside for a breath of fresh air or something. It wasn't anything like his balcony at Stark Tower, but the objective was the same. The world around him consisted entirely of weeds and this dilapidated building he'd left behind him, but he didn't care. He was outside, he was breathing, and that was enough for him.

"Yeah," Antonio replied, still holding on to Tony's good arm, as if he was afraid Tony was going to faint at any moment. "You were with us for about two days, give or take a few hours. No doubt being out here must seem exhilarating." Tony looked at him, recognizing the tone in those final words. Tony may not have been the world's most wonderful friend, or even that perceptive when it came to what people would call 'social etiquette', but he knew guilt when he saw it. It was a feeling he had experienced plenty of times before, and no doubt would experience many times in the future.

"Hey. Antonio." Antonio turned to him, and Tony punched him lightly in the arm. "I can't say that none of this is your fault. But I can say this; you are the most wonderful human being to exist, all because you helped me out of there. You no doubt saved my arm. I owe you a lot." Tony rarely said things like this, but the situation was different from most other situations he had been in in life. "If there is ever anything I can do for you, let me know, and I will see to it." It was his way of saying thank you, and Antonio seemed to understand that. He put his hand on Tony's good shoulder, giving him a small smile.

"Remove your hand from Tony Stark, sir."

Tony and Antonio turned, surprised to see Director Fury standing there, wielding a pistol trained straight at Antonio. Without missing a beat, Tony stepped in front of him, a barrier between him and the pistol.

"Hey, Fury," he said jubilantly, trying not to notice how Fury was visually cataloging his various aches and pains. "Glad you could make it. You're quite the sight for sore eyes. It's mostly because it's bright out here and I think I have a black eye, but let's not argue semantics." A dark figure moved behind Fury, and Tony got up on the tip of his toes to see who it was. "Hawkeye! It's been a while! Still not talking much outside of the Animal Brigade? You know, it's funny, because Black Widow's a bug, right? So, you're a bird. You could eat the Black Widow! That's like taking the whole thing backwards, isn't it? Kind of takes the menace out of her name, doesn't it?"

Hawkeye had an arrow drawn over the taut string of his bow, aimed with almost mechanical precision at Antonio's head. "I won't argue this with you entirely, Stark, but it should be known that Black Widows are not bugs, they are arachnids, and most spiders are poisonous to birds." Tony shook his head, looking put out.

"You just ruined my fun, Hawkeye," he quipped, but it was clear he was trying to alleviate the tension. Fury was still calculating, his one eye absorbing everything, and Clint was just awaiting the signal to fire. Tony knew all of this, and so he changed tactics; his face dropped into a serious expression. "But in all seriousness, you both don't need to be so uptight. The man behind me is named Antonio, he splinted my broken arm and gave me painkillers, among other helpful things. He's the reason I haven't died yet."

Silence tumbled on by, the slight breeze that followed it nearly music to Tony's ears, but he didn't let himself get distracted. There was still Fury to think about, and if he let himself be carried away by flights of fancy in his presence, Tony knew where it would all end up. After a moment of intense deliberation on his part, Fury lowered his pistol, but made no signal to Hawkeye, whose bow was still strung. "That may be true," he said, looking at Tony, as he holstered his pistol, "but it doesn't change the fact that he is still one of your kidnappers. Actions must be taken against all parties involved."

"I seriously don't think he deserves any form of punishment," Tony said, his voice firm. "He wasn't one of the ones who did this to me. He always left the room right before it happened, and he cleaned me up afterward. That was it. He kept me  **alive** -"

"It doesn't matter what good he did in the darkness." Fury's voice, too, was hard as stone, and Antonio was silently thankful that he was being protected by someone who wasn't intimidated by him. He had only heard stories of Fury, having been privy to S.H.I.E.L.D. information for a short time, and they had all been quite farfetched, in his opinion; but now, seeing the man in the flesh, he could only assume they were all most likely true. "What matters it that this man that you're so blindly standing up for was party to your capture, torture - which, I don't care what you have to say about it, we will take you to see a physician for - and the violation of your home. Tony, he may have been the best man there, but that's not good enough. You don't get to decide who gets taken to justice and who is exempt from it;  **I** do. And when someone captures a member of the Avengers Initiative, it is directly under my jurisdiction, and I am not such a forgiving person. I don't care if he cured cancer; he's still a criminal, Tony."

Tony had stayed silent during this lecture, but his eyes were molten steel. His mouth curled in a snarl, and he opened his mouth to speak, but he was beaten to the punch by someone else. "I will go quietly," Antonio said, putting his arms close together in front of him, as if waiting to be cuffed. "I know I have done wrong, and I apologize for it. But, as Director Fury said, I am not exempt from justice. I will go quietly." Tony turned to him, his eyes dimmed down with something unknown, and Antonio slowly inched past him, coming in front of Fury and holding out his wrists. Fury stared at him a moment, and he looked back, but Fury simply shook his head and pushed his hands down.

"If you will come quietly, we won't need to restrain you. Hawkeye," he said, looking at the man in question. "Escort our prisoner to the car. Keep an eye on him." Hawkeye nodded, allowing the bowstring to go slack before he sheathed the arrow and slung the bow around his back. He grabbed Antonio's arm and pulled, but it was gentle, and they waded through the thick grasses toward the car. Fury and Tony stood alone, staring each other down.

Finally, Tony spoke. "If any harm comes to him, I swear - "

"We will take care of Antonio. We just need to question him. We aren't animals, Tony."

"No, but you do a great job of convincing me you are."

"I will never be able to get you to trust me, will I?"

"You were never able to make me think the Avengers were a good idea, so why should you expect that me trusting you would be a successful venture?"

"And do you still think the Avengers Initiative is a bad idea?"

"No, I've been convinced otherwise. True, it has a million holes that could make it all fail spectacularly - "

" - which we have a million failsafes for - "

" - and I will watch them all fail, too - but it is, overall, what is needed. If six people can protect Manhattan from an alien invasion and a simultaneous nuke strike, then what's so bad about it? But it wasn't you who proved this to me." He did not let his gaze go soft. "It will never be you."

Fury smiled infuriatingly. "As long as the lesson is learned, it matters not who the teacher is."

Tony scoffed, looking off into the distance, seeing the city on the skyline. Was he really so far away from home? "Okay, Yoda."

"Tony!"

Tony looked around, his eyes wide, and he spotted the source of the voice. Natasha was busy trying to keep him from speaking again, but Tony had heard him. "Lonnell."

Natasha approached with Lonnell before her, his hands on the back of his head. Behind them, Steve was carrying Hamilton. Tony ignored the fluttering feeling he got in his chest, blaming it on the drugs and the arc reactor. Lonnell looked at Tony, smiling even as he was pushed to his knees by a firm feminine hand on his shoulder. "You got out of the building okay."

"DON'T TALK TO HIM, HANS!" Hamilton cried, thrashing in Steve's arms, but the super soldier merely hung on, an unfitting look of stony indifference on his face. "You fucking traitor! Both of you are fucking traitors! When I get my hands on that motherfucking 'Spic - "

"I got him in the eyes, Tony. The hot iron. I got him, Tony." The half-manic smile on Lonnell's face did nothing to disturb Tony. In a tense silence, everyone stared at Tony and Lonnell, who was looking reverently at the man before him. In a bizarre, perverse way, it looked as if Lonnell was on his knees worshiping a god. Tony ignored his gut feeling telling him to keep his mouth shut about it, but he couldn't help it.

"He deserved it."

The despairing silence afterward was enough for everyone to see that the Tony Stark who had gone into that building was not the same as the one who came out. He had been reduced, through pain, to the same man who had neutralized all of those terrorist groups across the sea in the name of vengeance. His eyes were hollow, as if all he knew now was pain and hatred.

Steve's eyes hardened as he silently vowed he would make Tony Stark whole again, no matter what it would take.


	6. Elusion

Tony hated tubes and wires. He hated the beeping of hospital machines, hated the feeling of a cast on him, and hated the constant monitoring to make sure his arm would recover. He hated how lenient everyone was being with him, how their eyes glazed over or they gave him pitying smiles when they saw him. He hated how they would coddle him, how they would pad all the information they were giving him as if to soften the blow. He was a big boy. He could handle it.

"I'm not pressing charges against Antonio." It had been said flatly, and Fury looked as if he had been expecting it. His hands remained (damnably) folded behind his back, his one eye completely stolid as it gazed at him evenly. Ironically, the only person he wasn't loathing for lavishing him with tender affections was Fury, but it really didn't count, because he kind of hated him anyway.

"Fine." His reply was straight to the point. "What about Hans and Hamilton?"

Tony shot him a glare that was partially hooded by his eyebrows. "His name's actually Lonnell, not Hans; and I'm not pressing charges against him."

"Why not? Hamilton's doing it."

"Well, fuck Hamilton."

Fury's brow tightened. "You see, now you're not playing fair. I can understand your not pressing charges against Antonio to an extent - he did, after all, salvage your broken remains and haul your ass outside - but the fact remains that Hans - or Lonnell - did more damage to you than Hamilton did. Not to mention there is the issue of Hamilton himself, which we will attend to later."

"Can you really say that he did damage to me because he wanted to? His wife was being threatened. He was being lied to. I'd torture anybody if they took someone close to me, like - " he paused, then, uncertain why a certain spangley soldier came first to mind. The whole 'Melusina-transforming-into-Steve' thing had apparently gotten to him. " - Jarvis."

Fury seemed to take his pause as another issue entirely. He deadpanned. "Jarvis isn't a person, Tony; he can't feel pain."

Tony reared up in his bed, careful not to jar his arm. "You heartless bastard!" he cried theatrically. "How dare you insult his inherent humanity! Jarvis is just as much as person as you!"

Fury rolled his eyes, his annoyance palpable. He took his sweet time moving toward the door. "I can tell there isn't much I can say that will change your mind," he said curtly, "so I will take my leave." He reached for the handle, but suddenly paused, turning toward Tony once again. "Before I do, though, I should let you know something. No matter what you say about Hans and his background, we are going to punish him. Antonio, too." Before Tony could retort, he held up a silencing hand and continued. "Like it or not, they were accomplices in your capture and torture. It is my responsibility to treat them as such."

Tony's expression was hard and cold. "If that's the case, then I should be charged, too."

Fury's tone lowered considerably. "I'm not going to argue this with you any further. You have to understand; you're an Avenger. S.H.I.E.L.D. is, at this point, largely responsible for the persona of Iron Man. If we don't fight to the teeth to protect you, then we're going to lose you."

Tony smiled dryly. "Never even had me in the first place."

A tense moment passed with neither man breaking eye-contact. Tony knew precisely what Fury wanted him to do; he wanted him to back down and let S.H.I.E.L.D. handle this. If Tony was any other man, he would. If he was any other man, he knew that Fury would've scared him. If he was any other rich man, he would have hidden behind his wall of money and pretended he had all the bravado in the world, and let the big boys play while he remained sequestered in his workshop.

But he wasn't anybody else. He was Tony Stark, and Tony Stark didn't run from anything, especially from hard-headed S.H.I.E.L.D. directors. He would stick with his decision until the very end, and Fury knew it. All he was asking was for Tony to be different, just this once. 'Tough luck, Cyclops. My opinion's not going anywhere any time soon.'

Suddenly, the door clicked, and the spell was broken. Fury stepped off to the side as the door swung open, revealing his fellow Avengers, no doubt come to revel in his misery. Well, maybe Natasha.

"Avengers," Fury said by way of salutation, and he walked past them before they all filed in, one after the other. First one in was - of course - Natasha, furthering his theory that she had come to poke fun at him.

As they all moved in, Tony once again acted as if he were struck, pointedly not looking at Steve. "You drove all the way to the hospital to visit little ol' me? Aww, you shouldn't have!"

Bruce simply rolled his eyes, a small smile in place. Barton, on the other hand, looked less amused. "We didn't want to, at first," he said. "But Fury nearly exploded on us. He said something about 'raising morale' and packed us all in a car."

Tony sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Of course he did."

"What matters now is that we're here," Natasha said, her arms folded. She leaned against the wall inconspicuously, her gaze stoic. "And that means that she isn't too far behind."

Tony quirked a brow. "She? Who is - "

Tony's unfinished question was answered in the form of a very flustered Pepper Potts storming into the room, her face flushed from exertion. "Tony!" she breathed, rushing to his side. "Tony, thank God you're back. Are you okay?"

"Pepper, I'm fine."

She gave him a quick once-over which seemed more like an epileptic jerk than anything. "He's fine. He's fine." She looked at him again, then threw her hands up in the air. "Do you notice a pattern here? Do you notice how this always happens to you? This always happens to you. And you're fine." She threw a pleading look at the Avengers behind her. "He's fine!"

Tony's expression morphed into one of readiness. He didn't even take a millisecond to prepare his rebuttal. "Pepper - "

She pressed her fingers together, miming a 'shush' motion. "Tony, I don't want to hear this from you. You have literally a mile of papers to sort through when you get back to full health. I've had to run a company frantic about losing you in your absence, not that I don't do it on a daily basis anyway. I just want you to admit, just once, that you're not okay, and you're taking leave. Please."

Tony sat up straighter, his look growing indignant. He suddenly didn’t care that his fellow Avengers were gathered around them, not that that would have changed the way he acted anyway. Well, maybe Steve. ‘Damnit with the Steve crap already.’ His irritation leaked to the surface. "I don't see how that would help anything. No, as soon as I’m able to escape this place I’m going to sign your silly papers and head right on back to the lab.” His look grew slightly pensive here. “There are some upgrades I need to make to the suit. Do we even know what the hell got it to shatter like that? I fell apart like a metal jenga tower.”

“Sonic waves,” Bruce’s voice said plainly, and Tony turned to him, his eyebrows furrowed together as he thought.

“But sonic waves aren’t small enough to enter the openings in the suit.”

“Maybe not normal sonic waves,” Bruce answered easily, as if they had done this kind of dance before. He rather fell into it with ease, Steve noticed, not even seeming to take to heart how hurt Tony looked. He still didn’t look better, despite having gotten significant amounts of decent sleep and decent medical help. This kind of Tony could almost be detached from the Tony who had ordered another man to abacinate his kidnapper. “Alas, these were not those kinds of sonic waves.”

“Transmitter?”

“Even worse. Amplifier.”

“And yet they weren’t too big? Are you sure about this?”

“Wave redactor built into the generator.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up. “Huh. That’ll do it, then. You still have it?”

“Yes. It’s waiting back at the lab.”

“Great. We’ll have to take a stab at it later.”

“Not too many. Fury claims it’s S.H.I.E.L.D. evidence.”

Tony groaned, suddenly the picture of a teenage boy waiting for his father to finish checking a motorcycle for any defects before he can ride it. “Fuck him. He’s given me enough shit as is. I’m going to look at it when I get home. Which will probably be today.”

Pepper decided to remind Tony she was there by saying, rather sternly and in a voice Steve had no doubt would do well if she was ever enlisted, “No you’re not, Tony.” He tried to retort, but she pushed gently on his forehead, pushing him slowly to recline. “You’re going to stay here as long as the nice doctors ask you to, and you’re going to recover nicely before you even so much as think about that transmitter.”

“Amplifier,” Tony bit back petulantly, but he didn’t say anything more. Pepper seemed grateful for even that, for she gave him a small smile.

“Happy’s waiting outside. He sends his regards,” she said, moving to the door. “I trust Tony to your hands, Captain. Goodness knows he needs some military discipline.”

Steve straightened up, smiling slightly. “I’ll do what I can, ma’am.” She smiled back, sparing one last smile for Tony, and left the room. Steve turned back to Tony after the door shut behind her, surprised to see the genius already looking at him, an odd look in his eye. Before he could even wonder about it, though, it faded, replaced instead with an annoyance that could only be caused by being confined to bed for a while.

“I see a lot of unfairness revolving around this situation. Fury’s somehow turned this all into my fault, I don’t get to tinker, and Pepper’s… Pepper.” He sneered at the door, as if it could somehow affect her, but there was no heart in it. Then, he turned to Bruce. “Help me out, buddy.”

Bruce’s complacent smile was resting easily on his lips, but there was a tightness to his eyes. “I can’t bring you anything,” he said, and Tony’s mouth dropped open. He shrugged in response. “Fury’s orders. Sorry. I really don’t want to get anybody angry.”

“For your sake, right? So they don’t put you in the glass jar.”

Steve winced, the lines of his face hardening at the statement, but to his surprise, Bruce just laughed. “No, not my sake,” he said. His demeanor was calm, but his eyes spoke a ready warning; ‘trust me’. Tony seemed to get it, for he nodded his head, staring blankly at his sheets. He sat this way for a moment, before finally he came back to life, turning a look to Natasha.

“And let me guess. You’re not going to help me either.” Her stoic demeanor was a good enough response. He looked hurt, but she wasn’t fooled. “After all we’ve been through together.”

“We haven’t been through anything together,” she said. “Well, not anything of any worth, anyway.”

“Right,” Tony said, eyes snapping rather astutely to Barton, who was ironically positioned right next to her. “Forgot for a moment that you and Barton were always BFFs. That means there’s no room for poor Tony, am I right?” He smiled, then, looking around the room. “That’s okay. I’ve got the big blonde… Where is he?”

“Thor’s on Asgard,” Steve replied, and Tony threw his hands up in the air, taking this opportune moment to suddenly remember his arm. He bit his lip, carefully lowering his arm back down, a flicker of pain in his expression.

Before he’d even known it, Steve had rushed to his side and gently helped him ease it down, cradling it as best he could. He suddenly had the deep fear that his super-soldier serum would cause him to twitch, crushing Tony’s arm in his hands. His hands shot back to his chest, suddenly patting down the front of his flannel shirt as if something was amiss. His eyes shot nervously to Tony, who was staring at him, a strange look lingering behind his eyes. Silence suddenly settled over the scene like a fog, a sudden spell falling over the two.

“We should leave Tony to recover.” Steve looked at Natasha, who was giving him a knowing look. _Oh, right_. Previous information rushed back to him, the spell completely broken. He knew what he had to do, and she was giving him his window.

Tony’s mouth dropped open in a comic parody of disbelief. “You’re going to leave me here? Already? I thought there’d be more laughs, more hugs, or at least more cake! Fine, leave me with the stuffy doctors and the medical beeping. I have robots that are better friends than you.”

“Good- ** _bye_** , Tony,” Natasha said without any malice in it, and the door clicked shut behind them, leaving Tony and Steve alone in the room together.

Now was a good time for absolutely every single doubt Tony had throughout his stay at La Casa de Hamilton to come right back to him, wasn’t it.

“At least you’re sticking around, Cap,” he said, covering up his nervousness with what little humor he could muster on an empty tank. “Good to know there’s at least **some** loyalty among friends.”

Steve smiled, and Tony had to dampen his returning smile because **_damn_** if he wasn’t acting like a lovestruck teen right now. Just that thought made him wonder if Steve was some kind of hunky quarterback or basketball captain back in the day – no, Tony could definitely see him being captain of the baseball team, since he was all ‘stars and stripes forever’ and whatnot, and baseball was America’s pastime. Just the thought of him in tight baseball pants and a well-fitting jersey made things a little more awkward than before, and _pay attention Tony because Steve’s talking to you_.

“ – especially since I was there when we got you. Is that okay?”

Tony shook his head to clear his thoughts, leaning forward a bit on his bed. “Sorry, dozed off there for a sec. Want to repeat that?”

Steve’s expression looked uncomfortable, as if what he had asked about was highly unpleasant, and Tony suddenly didn’t want him to repeat it. He was half tempted to just ask him if he wanted to get ice cream instead. They could easily sneak Tony out on a wheelchair no problem if they took the stairs, because nobody likes to use stairs.

“I said,” he began, his voice a little quieter, “Fury wants the whole story on what happened while you were in there. Hamilton was quiet about it, as were Antonio and Lonnell, and he figured the best person to ask you would be me, considering I was there when we rescued you.” He looked at Tony pleadingly. “He’s never going to let up until he knows, and you know it, Tony.”

Tony’s eyebrows were hard over his eyes, his gaze both cold and burning. His stubbornness and anger were just as formidable as Fury’s, if not even more so at times. “If he thinks I’m going to tell him what happened in there, then we have a very mistaken Cyclops on our hands, now don’t we.”

Steve could feel himself growing irritated, but he tried his best to act beyond its influence. “Why not? It would surely make the investigation a lot easier and smoother if you told them exactly what happened. We could bring them to justice if – ”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Spangles,” Tony deadpanned, his voice flat and tone dark, “but justice isn’t quite as simple as it was back in the day. Morality isn’t just black and white anymore, Cap; there’s a grey area in there too. This isn’t just Axis and Allies anymore. There is no right or wrong answer in this circumstance, and there’s no way that anybody is going to come out with the best deal.” _I know it because I’ve been on this side of it before._

Steve’s eyebrows lowered, his look growing stony. “Then what do you propose I do, then? Return to Fury saying you were unwilling to talk? You know as well as I do that he isn’t going to stop just because you’re unwilling to talk about anything. He’s going to find this out, Tony, whether you want him to or not, and he’s going to take action based on his findings. Are you willing to let someone else decide what happened to you, or are you just going to tell him yourself and save the trouble of trying to fix it later?”

Tony knew he had a point, but he wasn’t going to say it. It wasn’t as if he was doing this to inconvenience Fury; he was doing this because he knew that Fury would see to it that those who did not deserve to suffer were going to be made to, all because they stole an Avenger. Tony heard his own words ironically echo in his mind; _don’t take my stuff._ He had been willing to take Loki back by force, and Fury was just as willing to do the same. The retribution would no doubt be no less severe than what Tony had in store for Thor.

“I am not an object.” He didn’t want to say that out loud, but he did. “I can’t be treated as if I am some precious item that has been stolen.”

Steve’s look grew more fierce in its intensity. “You’re obviously correct; you’re not an object, but that doesn’t mean you’re not valuable. You belong with us. If something is bothering you or has harmed you in any way, we need to know so that we can protect you when the time comes – ”

Tony scoffed, his look turning offended and incredulous simultaneously. “Belonging. That’s a laughable concept. It might not seem that way, but when Fury is protective of something, it usually means that particular something will further him in some way.” Tony’s voice was raspy and harsh, an accumulation of all the yelling and all the detrimental substances he had taken in. “To him I’m a token pawn to be saved and moved later. I say again; I’m not an object, especially not a precious one.”

Steve’s voice was rising, though it did not waver. His tone was firm, like the strong pressure of the tides. “I’m not implying you are an item, Tony, but like it or not, you **are** precious. You need to understand that. If I can’t keep you safe – ”

Tony’s voice rose to match Steve’s. “I know Fury would chew you up and spit you out, Cap, but this is **my** issue, and you’re not helping by – ”

“For God’s sake, Tony, can’t you see that this **isn’t about _Fury_**?!”

Tony froze, his own retort stopping in his throat, lodged uncomfortably in his windpipe. His larynx stuttered, shorting out like a rogue AI malfunction. Steve was still huffing across from him, his shoulders rising and dropping sporadically as he turned his face downward, his cheeks stained pink. He looked incredibly uncomfortable, as if he’d said more than he should have, and Tony could see it. His mouth opened of its own accord, and instead of a stinging retort or a plea not to make things more confusing, he said, “Not about… Then what **is** this about, Rogers?”

Steve looked up, his eyes wide with something he’d never actually seen on the captain before: fear. His mouth was slightly open, as if he was straining to gather the right words, his hands instantly shooting to his pockets. Curled into himself, he looked self-conscious and young, but still he seemed so strong, like a coiled wildcat waiting to spring. Tony mused that he might not have ever seen something as beautiful, but chose to ignore it in favor of watching his lips open, and a soft, “I…” left his mouth.

Then, the fire alarms went off, and everything shot straight into hell.

Steve’s eyes shot to the door, while Tony’s shot to the window next to it. At first, he could see nothing but the orderlies race into rooms, beginning to move patients out to safety, but then he saw something fly by. His eyes squinted for a few split seconds before he shot out of bed and, without warning, raced to the door. A choked ‘Tony!’ followed him out of the room as he yanked the door open and shot off in the same direction, following the figure down the hall and around the corner at a full sprint. His feet slapped against the tiles as he bore his weight down the hallway, heavy footfalls behind him telling him that the captain had begun legging it behind him.

He raced after the figure, recognizing instantly who he was following, knowing precisely what they were going to do. He didn’t know why he felt he had needed to follow Lonnell as he was racing through the hospital, but he did know one thing; he needed to see how this ended.

Lonnell turned another corner, running past the elevator and shoving the stairwell door open, hopping over the edge despite the loud clang made by the door. Tony ran, beat the door before it closed, and made his way down the stairs, gripping loosely onto the railing. He looked over the edge as he ran, watching the streak of hospital gown white as it raced down the stairs, shoving hard at a door and racing onto the chosen floor. Tony hopped over the edge of the railing and jumped down the rest of the steps, shoving the door open just as it closed and following him. He didn’t know where the captain was, but it didn’t bother him. Not until this was over.

He ran down the hall, watching as Lonnell shouldered his way past a few orderlies who demanded he stop immediately, and a few took off after him. He hopped over a patient being pulled across the hall, turned abruptly, and pushed in a door, racing inside. The orderlies got caught on the patient, trying frantically to move him aside before resuming, but Tony raced after him, pushing past the orderlies, jumping over the patient himself, and finally stopping in front of the door.

Inside, Lonnell brushed his hair from his eyes and looked down at the patient. Tony looked from Lonnell’s form to the bed, instantly recognizing who it was despite having already known. On the bed lay a semi-comatose Hamilton, his eyes covered in gauze and bandage, his breathing even and soothing. Lonnell’s hands shook as he slowly moved toward him, his figure hunched as if he were stalking his prey, but then he paused. Turning suddenly to the chair next to him, he grabbed it, shoving it against the door. He pulled at a table that sat in there, at a medical cabinet, pushing them all against the door.

He looked up, examining his work, before his gaze moved over and caught Tony’s through the window. He looked at him for a moment, and Tony’s heart sped as he nodded, looking back at Hamilton. With a sardonic smile, Lonnell nodded back, reaching for the spare pillow next to Hamilton’s bed.

The captain’s footsteps were speeding down the hall, his figure dark against the starched light colors of the hospital. He kept his eyes glued to the window, watching as Lonnell moved closer to Hamilton and got on his bed, straddling him. Just as Hamilton’s body twitched in wakefulness, Lonnell brought the pillow down on his face, pressing as hard as he could, his muscles visibly straining. Hamilton’s cries were muffled as he was slowly suffocated, Lonnell’s body pressed hard down on top of him.

The footsteps stopped next to Tony, but he didn’t spare Steve a glance as he watched the man who had him tormented for hours upon hours finally be laid to rest. “No such thing as black and white,” he murmured, and in his periphery he could see Steve turn to look at him. He just continued staring forward, watching the man he’d slowly begun to hate die a horrible death. “How’s it look? Gray? Yeah, it looks pretty gray to me.”

He watched Hamilton die, slowly and painfully, his body struggling to take in air as Lonnell sweated over him, his teeth grit as he held his body down, the struggling man’s flailing arms unable to pull Lonnell away from him. Slowly, Tony’s hand was taken, strong fingers curling around his own, and he did nothing to stop it as he was slowly tugged away, the hallway swarming with orderlies evacuating patients and a few firemen attempting to break in the door.

The last sight he saw pertaining to Hamilton and Lonnell was the gloriously dark sight of Hamilton’s arm twitching and falling lifeless on the bedspread.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is definitely the last, and it may be so incredibly long that I'll just asdfjkl; so you may have to wait for a few days yet to get the chapter. Special emphasis on the 'may' part. I seriously hope I can dish this out pretty soon.
> 
> I'm excited for the conclusion and I hope you are too! And let's hope the ending doesn't disappoint. *crosses fingers*


	7. Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know how I said that this was in beta?
> 
> Well, I seriously might rewrite this last chapter, because my mind is like 'it's past midnight, you're kind of tired, and POSTING THIS RIGHT NOW IS A GREAT IDEA.' My over-tired mind is like 'full speed ahead' but I'm having serious doubts about this.
> 
> So the last few bits might get a bit of tinkering later, because I hate feeling dissatisfied with this, but this is the general gist of it. UGH. I'm really confused about it, and reviews are VERY appreciated. Let me know what you think, and if it needs reworking or not.

Tony had seemingly come back to life the minute they stepped out of the hospital, his eyes finally taking a few moments to blink again, but if he was uncomfortable with Steve holding his hand, he didn’t say anything of it. Instead, they simply stood where they stopped by the curb, watching the hospital and waiting for the cleanup crew to handle the mess. In silence they watched S.H.I.E.L.D. agents fly in and out of the building, taking care of the political mess they now had on their hands. A kidnapper was murdered, left dead in his bed, and the culprit was one of his own. No doubt this was more of a hassle than they bargained for when they took them in the first place. As the fire department filed in to check if there actually was a fire, the Avengers appeared, one by one, at their side, each of them casting strange glances at Tony, with only one exception.

When Clint Barton finally found the pair and walked across the parking lot to meet with them, he didn’t glance at Tony’s vacant expression, or the fact that he was still only wearing hospital clothes. Instead, he simply looked down at their entwined hands and gave Steve a small, secretive smile, which Steve immediately understood. He ducked his head in response, a small blush staining his cheeks as he thought back to Clint’s earlier words. Suddenly, all the confusion that still tainted that conversation vanished, and Clint’s gaze seemed to assure him that he understood. Steve was oddly thankful for Clint’s astuteness; he needed reassurance now more than ever.

The Avengers simply stood together in peace, watching the hospital flare up with activity that was in no way welcome. It all seemed oddly peaceful, considering what had just happened, but they knew it wouldn’t last. When a black SUV pulled up and a suited figure hopped out of the back and gestured for them to file inside, they did so, one by one, in silence. Grudgingly, Steve released Tony’s hand only to watch his back as he climbed into the vehicle, the captain himself following swiftly after. Now that he had him back, he’d be damned if he let Tony leave his sight.

Judging by the tense silence on the part of both the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the front of the car and the Avengers themselves, everyone already knew without saying that Fury was livid. Upon arrival at headquarters, Bruce’s presence had been requested at one of the labs, and so, after a slightly apologetic glance at his companions, he appeasingly followed the scientist attempting to lead him away.

As soon as his back turned the corner and he was out of sight, the remainder of the Avengers had instantly been summoned to Fury’s office and were lined up in a row, all equally subject to the horror of his one-eyed glare. Without Tony joking about something grand like ‘the fury of Fury’ or calling him ‘Cyclops’ again, the whole situation was strangely intense. Natasha’s hands were behind her back, her stance rigid, as if she knew precisely what to expect. Next to her, Clint’s posture was oddly opposite, slack and relaxed, his face expressionless. Steve maintained a soldier’s appearance, respectfully standing tall before his superior, despite feeling a creeping sensation of unease wracking through him. Tony simply stood as Tony does, his face oddly pale, his hands oddly still. Usually he was always doing something with them, but now, they rested at his sides as if they were broken pieces of machinery he had no hope of fixing.

Fury took in all of this and more with his one keen eye before slamming his hands on the table in front of him, palms down. Nobody jumped, and Steve knew why; for Natasha and Clint, it was due to prior training; for Steve, it was because of the sound of bombs becoming not a sound inducing fear but a beacon for action; and for Tony, it was because they all knew he really wasn’t here, not now. His mind was off somewhere else, and Steve got the sickening feeling that it was because he was reliving the horrifying sight of the torturer smothering the kidnapper in his hospital bed, running it through his mind like a film on repeat.

And Steve wondered, as Fury still continued to examine them despite his one brief moment of showing his outrage, if Tony would ever truly forget what happened, or if he’d be merciful enough to accept this as a morbid victory and let it lie. As much as Steve knew he wouldn’t like it, he also knew it was possible that Tony would also keep it with him always, like a token to be treasured, to remind himself that those who had wronged him were mercilessly snuffed out. The chances of it being that kind of memory were high, and Steve had to resist the urge to grip Tony’s hand, to grasp him and tug him back into reality, back to his side.

In the end, it was Fury’s dark tone of voice that brought Steve back, though if it did so for Tony, he wasn’t sure. Not yet, anyhow.

“ **You** ,” he seethed, pointing a vengeful finger at Tony, “have caused a whole lot of shit around here as of late.” He raised himself from where he was leaning on his hand, pacing behind his desk once more, allowing the totality of his annoyance to seep through his demeanor. His hackles were no doubt raised as he paced, knowing that he had tried to pin the situation down with all of his might, only for control to wriggle away once again, elusive as a shadow. “Is it as if any of this is your fault? No, I concede that point. Are you being unnecessarily difficult in regards to the treatment of several persons involved? Yes, but you know damn well that I don’t quite give a shit about what you have to say. Is this a tangled web of bullshit that’s too thick for me to even **try to give a shit about untangling**? Hell fucking yes.”

He turned to the group, but his eye was on the one. “You’re an asset to us, Tony, but you’re also a liability. We can’t risk losing you to this mess, and you know that.” He looked at Tony, no doubt attempting to gauge a reaction, but there was no reaction to gauge. Tony was still silent, his face a mocking mask suppressing all of his usual bravado, his eyes trained on Fury’s with no defiance left in them. Fury seemed to realize this, realize the state he was in, because he sighed, sliding down into his chair, his hand pressed to his forehead as he tried to work everything out.

“We have to take care of Lonnell, Tony,” he said after a long silence, apparently tired of being cryptic and mysterious. Steve could tell he was worn down by the situation, his voice ragged when he wasn’t projecting, his posture oddly submissive and fragile. “There is no other way for this to be solved. The Counsel is asking for his head. The media is clamoring for his blood.” He stood, his voice rising a tad, and Fury seemed more like himself again. “And as much as I hate to surrender to either of these, there is still the matter of the law to consider. We have a cold-blooded torturer in our custody who has a capacity for murder in the first degree, and that is not to be condoned, not when our records state that he is responsible for the deaths and traumatizing of many other individuals not as fortunate as you. We have a policy for people who directly attack S.H.I.E.L.D., and as a member of our Avengers Initiative, we must follow it to the letter. Lonnell will be judged by a jury of his peers and sentenced to death or be judged not guilty.”

Fury stared at Tony, and Tony stared back at Fury, and for a while, a silence so thick with his words nearly strangled the lot of them where they stood. Fury’s eye narrowed for a brief moment before he scoffed, sitting back down in his chair, looking tired and worn again. Steve averted his gaze down to his feet, his heart thudding slowly in his chest, and it felt heavier than usual.

“His wife had cancer, you know.”

Everyone’s eyes shot up to Tony, who still remained still, but his eyes were no longer glassy or distant. He was indeed finally with them. His eyes flicked around the room as if suddenly recognizing where he was, and he absently rubbed his wrists where two thick bruises still sat. “Hamilton hired Lonnell on the premise that if he continued to do as he said, he would pay for his wife’s treatment. I’d heard that the chip contained all the information that Hamilton had on Lonnell to use as collateral, and at first, I believed it. But then I remembered something.”

He moved forward in two steps and set his hands down on Fury’s desk, looking at him intently. “Hamilton wasn’t just a black market dealer, he was an arms trader, and while that chip may be used for data, it was certainly still able to be converted. If someone is tricky enough, they could disguise lines of code used for initiation sequences as data files that would convert back into code when the chip was inserted into the right machine. In this case, a de-armed bomb would suffice as the catalyst. The place Hamilton took me was awfully fucking big for something as base as a kidnapping, and there were spare parts and tools strewn all over the place. They were re-assembling a bomb using pieces they’d gotten off the black market, and it just so happened that all they needed was that one line of code to set it off at just the right moment. If Hawk, Widow and Steve hadn’t intercepted the chip when they had, this situation could have been much, much worse; maybe even a terrorist attack.”

He finished, his face still stoic and cold, but there was yet a spark of genius behind his eyes that hadn’t given up on this, and never would have. After a brief yet intense staring match between the two equally stubborn men, Fury finally nodded, quickly punching in a few numbers on his phone and pressing the speaker button. The phone didn’t even ring once before it connected. Steve watched the two men adamantly, and he noticed Tony’s subtle relaxation when Banner’s voice suddenly came over the speaker. “Banner.”

“Doctor Banner, it’s Fury. Did you get around to decoding everything in the chip?”

“Just about. It’s not really my forte, doing lines of code, but it isn’t all that different from an algorithm, really. Nothing turned up that was spectacular, just a few documents of financial records, but there was one file that was inoperable.”

“Was it unfamiliar to the decoding system?”

“Yes, and its file type was nothing that I knew of in regards to any **computer** operating system. I ran a simple check on it using algorithms to simulate different systems in an attempt to crack it open and it finally matched up to one that’s right up your alley.”

This time, it was Tony who responded. “Was it some sort of homing device?”

Banner didn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, it matched up to a system usually used in heat-seeking missiles or guided bombs.”

Fury gave Tony a look before looking back down at his desk, once again focusing on the conversation. “I’m going to send a disarming team to the location, see if they can sniff out any weaponry there. Stark has a suspicion that they were going to use it to detonate a bomb in a specific place.”

“The code itself didn’t specify any particular location. The equation used to produce it seems like it has breathing room to calculate the exact coordinates without a margin of error above about two percent. Apparently its target would have been moving fast enough to skim across latitude and longitude lines with little to no problem.”

“My guess it was some kind of S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment, possibly the helicarrier itself.”

Again, Fury’s head darted up to look at Tony, his face tight with obvious disdain, but Banner’s small, “that doesn’t seem too far off the mark” stopped him from making any comments.

Instead, he said, “Banner, see what else you can get, if there is anything else.”

“I’m on it.” Then, Fury ended the call, once again leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers. He stared up at Tony, who simply straightened up, adjusting the crappy shirt he’d been given and no doubt feeling uncomfortable in hospital pants.

“So,” he said, suddenly sinister and interested again, and Steve wanted to protest, to say that no doubt Tony was extremely tired and didn’t want to spend a gross amount of time batting away Fury’s hands, but general respect stopped him from doing so. “That clears up the matter of the reason for your capture. Now we just need the truth. What happened in there, Tony? What happened to you?”

This time, Steve actually did protest, his posture straightening the little it actually could. “Fury, sir,” he said, and Fury turned to look at him, his expression instantly going deadpan the moment Steve had spoken. “With all due respect, Stark is still far from completely rested, and no doubt the more recent events are weighing heavily on his mind – ”

But suddenly, Tony’s hand shot up, and though he didn’t look directly at the captain, Steve nevertheless felt his features go firm at the no doubt hardened look he would have been given if they were face to face. “Stand down, Rogers,” Tony said, the tone of teasing with which he usually said the sentiment gone. “I’m willing to speak up about it now, since there’s no point in hiding it. Lonnell’s head is on the block, anyway; there’s nothing I can do to change that.”

There it was again; the drastic changes (or were they always hiding?) that Steve kept finding in Tony, the hardened man beneath the skin that was more like the metal mask he bore than he had ever put thought into. Was he always hard underneath the skin, or was this a protective shell he pulled over himself, a cocoon used for protection when his usual joking demeanor couldn’t save him?

“If you want pinpoint accuracy, address Jarvis for actual timestamps, because the concept of time was a little vague to me.” He settled down on the edge of Fury’s desk, looking at the man, leaving the three remaining Avengers to stare at the back of his head. Fury made no move to excuse them. Steve wished he would.

“Just events would be nice,” Fury responded, leaning back in his chair and waiting for him to continue. Tony did so without a fuss.

“Well, there was an attack on my tower,” he began, his voice droll, but Steve knew that every word was like pushing pins into the wall, breaking a little more through his shell. And this was only the beginning. “It was sometime nearing sunset, I do believe, when I entered the room with the suit on. Instantly I was fighting this guy wearing nothing but black, and he dropped something but I didn’t know what it was. Jarvis started to say something, and then he and the suit’s interface just kicked out. Suddenly there was a hand on my leg and I was being swung into the wall with the last of the suit’s momentum – I was flying, if I recall correctly – and I completely destroyed that nice countertop I had actually just had installed not two weeks ago. Shame. Anyway, metal started flying everywhere and I felt something stabbing into my neck and then there was nothing. When I woke up, I was in a dark room, strapped to the table with no shirt on. It ended up that I was in the hands of my kidnappers, and the first thing they did was break my arm.”

Steve’s glance suddenly shot to the cast on his arm, having forgotten about that. Apparently Tony had forgotten too, because he was cradling it to himself even more closely than before, and Steve had no doubt that the running and exertion had done something unpleasant to it. He kept his eyes glued to the stark white of the cast as the story took a darker turn, revealing the copious amounts of torture he went through, the stubborn fight he put up even though he didn’t have to (because sincerely he knew nothing of the chip stashed in his room), the hallucinations and the reveal of Hans’ late wife and the terrible plot against him and – _oh, **Tony**._

“And that’s when I met you outside, Fury.” He stood from his lean against the man’s desk and fixed him with a sharp gaze, the dark rings under his eyes contributing much to the grittiness of his appearance. “Is that all you wanted?”

Fury looked back at him, seemingly unfazed, his hands still steepled in the air, his one eye still frighteningly keen with its gaze. Nevertheless, he seemed to have pity for Stark, for he simply waved a dismissive hand at him, and Tony got out of there, not needing to be told twice. Fury followed his back until the door shut between them, and then he looked at the other three Avengers still standing there, his gaze less petrifyingly astute. “I want you to watch over Stark,” he said without much preamble, though the remaining three seemed to have understood the underlying reason for the command. “Make sure nobody makes a move at him, make sure he gets plenty of rest, and for God’s sake, nobody let Pepper Potts leave him alone for two seconds or else he’ll run himself into the ground like he always does.” He looked firmly at them, and then, not sensing much protest from them, he said, “you may go now.” They filed obediently out of his room one by one, but as soon as the door closed, they began to speak.

“We need to divvy up our time so we can each watch over him in equal measure,” Clint said, his voice firm, though his hands were busy adjusting a few straps on his arms. “Obviously, watching him at his house is off limits, and considering the fact that Jarvis can see everything, it’d be a waste of time.”

“Stark spends roughly 18 hours away from home on his busiest days,” Natasha added, looking between the two men standing in front of her. She didn’t seem too against keeping an eye on Tony, and Steve had the decency to be relieved about that, because that meant he wasn’t the only one who was worried. “We can divide the hours equally amid the three of us and then work out dividends and time changes later.”

“I can take watch for the rest of today,” Steve said, easily willing to volunteer his time first. “He looks beat, and I bet if I can just sneak into the tower, I can ask Jarvis to alert us if he leaves the premises.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Clint agreed, his eyes still glued to the straps he was fiddling with, but the small smile on his face was more than enough to brand Steve’s cheeks a new shade of red. He remembered where he was, however, and so he schooled his expression once more, though he could tell by the calculating look in Natasha’s eye that it hadn’t escaped her notice. Honestly, he thought, shooting the grinning man a glare, Clint was acting like a friend in grade school who just found out who his crush was and wouldn’t stop pestering him about it when he saw them on the playground –

“Don’t let anything cloud your judgment, Captain. We need you to be at your best in order for Tony to avoid any unfortunate retaliation. We would be fools to think that he was immediately out of harm’s way just because he was out of their hands.” Her tone was hard, but her face was sincere, and the authority she held made Steve subconsciously straighten his posture.

“Understood, ma’am,” he replied, and he meant it. Now that Tony was back, he was absolutely ecstatic, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to use every ounce of his energy to make certain he stayed that way; safe, at home, and able to recover.

“Great,” Natasha replied. “Go ahead and have that chat with Jarvis. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be at all inconvenienced if we asked him to help out.” She looked at Clint, then looked back at the captain. “Barton and I will do a quick scout of the city: see if anything’s remotely amiss. We might accompany the bomb squad to the location afterwards, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” he replied, and Natasha nodded. With that settled, she turned on her heel and began to walk away. Clint finished fiddling with his strap and followed her, sending one last look at Steve that made him want to step on his foot in an attempt to break his smug assuredness. Vaguely, he remembered Peggy, his date, his fear of stepping on his dance-partner’s foot, and it left a bitter taste in his mouth. _That time is gone. It’s not the forties anymore. There is no Peggy left for me._ There was only Steve.

He sighed. _And I still don’t know how to dance._

* * *

The tall tower was easy to find. Even if you weren’t high up in the sky, the building stood towering over many of the buildings nearby it, and the newly-installed lettering spelling out the owner’s surname were more than bright enough and flashy enough to attract anybody’s attention. And besides, though the scenery had changed, New York remained the same; the layout was as familiar to him as the sound of his own heartbeat, or the weight of his favorite shield.

Breaking into said tower without Jarvis instantly notifying Tony? Not so much.

Steve was simply standing across the road from what Tony called the ‘civilian exit’ (considering he rarely actually used it anymore, simply instead using his suit to go from place to place), wondering how, exactly, he would manage to do this. It was his natural assumption that any break in, regardless if it was an Avenger with a heart of gold or a criminal, would instantly be logged and reported to Tony. In fact, he was fairly certain that if anyone so much as touched the glass of the window Jarvis would see to it that Tony was notified. The goal was for neither of those things to happen, so he had to think of something better. Perhaps appealing to Jarvis’ better nature the minute he arrived would serve him well? He only wished that he had one of Tony’s communication services that would allow him to talk to the AI directly without having to actually be inside the building. Of course, the only way to get to technology like that was the aforementioned genius, and then he’d ask why, and questions would fly, and then he’d get a mouthful of titanium alloy –

In the end, Steve had simply sighed, stuffing his hands in his hoodie pockets and crossing the street. It wasn’t exactly what Steve was thinking, which actually more closely resembled the phrase ‘to hell with it’, but, in terms of body language, it came pretty close.

He stepped up to the building, took a deep breath, and pushed the door in, walking inside. As soon as the door shut behind him, he turned his head up to the ceiling, closed his eyes tight, scrunched up his nose, and said, “Jarvis, please don’t tell Tony I’m here.”

“Of course, sir,” came the demure reply, though Steve thought he had heard a hint of amusement in the robot’s voice. But no, that wasn’t right, was it? Could robots feel emotions? He hadn’t quite gotten the hang of this yet. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit? I can assume you are here on S.H.I.E.L.D. business, are you not?”

“Yes, Jarvis, I am,” he replied, feeling more at ease now that he knew they were operating in secrecy. “I was just wondering if you could do us a huge favor, please.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Could you possibly tell either Clint, Natasha or myself when Tony leaves the tower, and where he is going when he does, for the next few weeks or so? We want to keep an eye on him and make sure he remains safe.”

“Certainly, sir. I will also notify S.H.I.E.L.D. of any suspiciously abrupt changes in activity or any extraordinary occurrences.”

Steve sighed, feeling relief wash over him in waves. “Thank you so much, Jarvis,” he said, adjusting his hoodie around his shoulders. “So, where is Tony now?”

“Mr. Stark has locked himself in his study.”

Steve’s gaze cast itself to the ceiling, and he knew that Jarvis wasn’t some odd being who existed in the ventilation system, and therefore wasn’t in the ceiling, but he couldn’t help himself. It was probably his ingrained manners telling him to look someone in the eye when he was speaking to them, and like it or not, Jarvis was a person too. He brought himself back to the matter at hand. “In his study? He never locks himself in his study. I thought he always locked himself in his workshop.”

“He has been oddly silent, Captain Rogers. I do believe he has a bottle of bourbon as well, and he has been sitting at his desk drinking for the past half hour.”

Steve grew silent himself, his hands freezing in their attempt at straightening out his attire. He looked at the elevator, briefly considering going upstairs and seeing Tony. But surely he wouldn’t want his company, would he? He didn’t seem the type to want to talk it out, especially to Steve…

“Sir, if I may be so bold,” Jarvis said, interrupting his thoughts and sending his gaze skyward once more, “I would report this as unusual activity for Mr. Stark. It is under much observation and past events that I have come to the conclusion that Mr. Stark usually blares his favorite band and works away his frustrations in the workshop. He is not one for silence.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Steve asked, his hands moving again, this time turning his hood the right way out. “Are you saying I should go up and see him?”

“It would not be remiss, sir.”

Steve froze again. Huh. He looked to the elevator doors once more. He frowned.

And then time seemed to jump, for suddenly he was in the elevator and the doors were sliding smoothly shut behind him. He stared at his feet, his blonde hair slightly messy, his hoodie abominable, his jeans and shoes old and wearing thin.

“Take me to Tony, please,” Steve said, his voice meek and his hands shaking.

“With pleasure, sir,” came Jarvis’ expected reply.

* * *

Tony wondered vaguely if they had any cigars lying around. He remembered, as a child, back when he was disillusioned and completely infatuated with the idea of taking all his father worked for as his own, wanting to sit at his desk as he did, to smoke cigars and hold glasses barely full of scotch. He remembered wanting to wear fancy waistcoats and drink slowly and speak softly and captivate people with the generosity of his hands and the wisdom from his mouth.

Now, though, he knows it was all an illusion; he knows all he has now are the empty fancy waistcoats and the glasses full to the brim of whatever he can find, and all he can do now is drink quickly and speak loudly. He knows there is some generosity left yet in his hands but from his mouth there pours nothing but dishonesty and bitterness. And he has no cigars.

He sipped once more from the bourbon in his glass, patting the bottle sitting on the floor once to reassure himself that there was more to come should he run unpleasantly (but unsurprisingly) dry. He had come home angry and tired, relieved and frustrated, horrified and resigned, and all together that made him a bitter man. Jarvis had welcomed him, as was his custom, but at his suggestions for food and sleep he had simply batted a hand up at the ceiling as a motion for silence. He’d then gone to his room and pulled from his wardrobe his dark maroon shirt, his black silk tie, his black waistcoat and black coat and pants. He’d dressed himself up nicely and left the tie loose and the top buttons undone, and didn’t even bother putting on the coat. Then he’d trudged to the dreaded study he’d put in his home for no other reason than to store the papers Pepper threw at him and whatnot and settled himself down in the armchair, slinging the coat over the back and preying upon the helpless alcohol that sat within arm’s reach on the end table.

There he had been for the past half hour, dressed in his darkest attire, sipping on his darkest spirits, looking aimlessly up at the ceiling and saying and thinking about nothing. Well, nothing except whether or not they had cigars lying around.

“Jarvis, do we have any cigars?”

“No, we don’t, sir.”

He didn’t curse, but that was because he wasn’t really upset. He was honestly too drunk and too maudlin to really care. “Mmm,” he said, the last portion muffled by the glass as he took a sip. “I really shouldn’t be smoking anyway, huh?”

“Another bad habit would not be advisable, sir.”

“Meh, meh, meh,” Tony mimicked derisively, his voice high-pitched and whiny. “I didn’t ask for a PSA, Jarvis.”

“Forgive my confusion.”

Tony didn’t remember programming his AI so that it could speak to him with such a dry tone. “I’m too good at what I do,” he murmured, taking another long drink of his bourbon. It went down like something unpleasant would, but he stomached it. It was his way of punishing himself; after all, he was, in a way, attending his own personal funeral procession.

“A funeral procession for a man I barely know; a man who broke my arm and tortured me. I must be completely fucked.” He sat up a little, though there was hardly any way he could sit up entirely when he was slung completely sideways over the chair. Given his current inebriated state, he honestly wouldn’t have done well even if he **hadn’t** been lounging over the wrong side of the chair. “Jarvis, do we have anything in our music bank that’s good for a funeral? I’m at a funeral right now, Jarvis, and I need funeral music. Just so long as it isn’t ‘Amazing Grace’ on the bagpipes or some shit.”

“Any preference in regards to musical period or style, sir?”

“Uhm,” he articulated, sliding up in his chair again, his glass tipping dangerously to one side. “How about something jazzy? Yeah. Something jazzy and dark.” His mind left him for a moment, his mouth still running. “How about something from Steve’s era? Something Steve would know.”

“I do believe I know just the piece, sir,” he replied, and within moments a thick, sinister noise was leaking through the speakers in the room, all saxophones and clarinets. A loud blaring chorus of trumpets suddenly burst out. Tony’s head rolled back on his shoulders, leaning against the arm of the chair, his breath leaving him in a sigh. He took another drink, relaxing as the music played.

As the dark tune rolled on, and, unbeknownst to Tony, the elevator climbed up the tower, the man himself finished his drink, turned in his chair and set his glass down on the table. With all the care he could muster, he stood, slowly but surely, taking the bottle of bourbon up with him, and, refilling his glass, picked it up once more, replacing it on the table with the bottle. He took a few steps out, tottered on his feet, and then began swaying from foot to foot in time with the music. He held one arm out, the other reaching out with his drink, and his eyes were closed, his lip pinched between his teeth. “It’s like a waterfall of red wine, Jarvis,” he slurred gently, taking another sip of his drink and continuing his slow dance. “What’s this called, anyhow?”

“Nightmare, sir, by Artie Shaw and his New Music. It was released in 1938. It is considered a ‘big band’ song, but I figured it would fit your criteria nicely.”

“Nicely doesn’t even begin to describe it, Jarvis. Well done, buddy.”

“I try my best, sir.” It was at this point that the door cracked open, and Steve Rogers’ head poked in, his eyes taking in the sight of a suavely-dressed, bare-footed, drunken Tony Stark. Tony spun on his heel, his eyes still closed, his lip still caught between his teeth, and Steve suddenly felt like bolting. However, at that particular moment, Tony Stark’s eyes opened and caught sight of the captain wedged in his doorway.

He stopped his dance, his hands falling to his sides. “Jarvis, kill it,” he said, his voice rumbling deep in his throat, and Jarvis obliged, the music fading pleasantly to a halt. For Tony and Steve, however, the music dying was like something being slaughtered before them, leaving behind an uncomfortable silence to fill up the room. Steve knew it was far too late to run away, so he stepped fully inside the darkness of the study, closing the door behind him with a gentle push.

“I’m surprised you’re not with Fury,” Tony said, unexpectedly breaking the silence. Or maybe, Steve thought, it **was** expected, because the look in his eye was something he could only describe as ‘scrutinizing’. “I thought for sure the Avengers would be planning a picnic; you know, nothing too fancy but still something nice and cozy, considering Tony Stark is out of commission due to being emotionally attached to the guy who attempted to break him. Literally. I figured the Avengers would have a field day without him.” He trudged over to the bourbon, abandoning the glass in favor of taking up the bottle itself, though what little was left in it made no difference.

Suddenly, Tony spun on his heel, his expression dark and cold, and unbidden memories of their arguments on the helicarrier came rushing back to him. He stalked toward Steve with a vicious kind of intent, and he stood toe-to-toe with the stunned captain, pointing up at him, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Or maybe Fury’s the reason why you’re here. I’m not surprised. What, did he ask you to look after me? I bet he pulled Clint and Natasha in, too. I bet you stopped by to take the first shift, right? Because you’re such a good friend.” The last part was spat with so much disdain that Steve could hardly counter, instead watching Tony’s retreating back as he moved back toward the table, taking a large swig from the bottle. “Jarvis, music again.”

A softer tune began to flow from the speakers, as requested; Steve recognized this tune too, wondered why Stark was playing something from the 1930s when he had his own era to stick to.

Steve finally regained control of his stunned voice, finally able to say something beyond gaping at Tony. His old, fresh wounds were opened again. Tony was insufferably rough when he was drunk, and it seemed to scratch at Steve until he was raw. “Listen, Stark – ”

“Fuck off, Captain,” he spat, whirling on his heel to glare at the man again. There was something uneasy in his eyes, something that lacked certainty and balance, that made Steve nearly reconsider, but he continued hissing at Steve, making him forget about it again. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I’m a big boy.”

“Yeah, you’re so big that when you can’t find your feet you crawl into the bottle,” he growled, his firm expression forming into place. “ **Clearly** you can handle yourself. That’s why Pepper’s always lingering around, right?”

Once again, he trudged across the expanse of the study to stand right in front of the captain. “Fuck you, Rogers. She runs the company, not me. I’m my own person. I don’t need a babysitter.” He took another long drink from the bottle, his eyes never leaving Steve’s. Hissing after the mouthful, he poked Steve hard in the chest with an elegant finger. “So you and all the others set after me can go fuck off.”

The music drifted to a slow, blissful conclusion, but the two men didn’t feel its cursory happiness. Steve’s eyes never left Tony’s, but his hand reached forward for the bottle, and he gripped the body of it. Tony’s features hardened and he didn’t release it, instead keeping his fist closed tightly around its neck. The upbeat melody of ‘The Trouble with Me is You’ started gleefully filling the room. Steve nearly smirked at the irony.

“Shut it off, Jarvis,” Tony said, voice low and feral, and once again, the music faded away. Tony’s eyes narrowed again, his lips drawn in a tight line. “I don’t get why you’re here. I mean, yeah, sense of duty and loyalty and all that jazz, and you’re really the only one who cares about the stupid Avengers this much,” he paused here to take another drink, “but I don’t get why it’s **you**. Did Fury send you first because you’re more trustworthy? The natural born leader? Because you’re less inclined to kill me? Less likely to?”

“You’ve already forgotten what I said in the hospital, Tony,” Steve said, subtly tugging on the bottle, but it wasn’t budging. “This isn’t about Fury. For me, it never was.”

The bottle moved. It slid out of Tony’s hand easily, and Steve turned and set it on a bureau sitting next to the door. He looked back at Tony, whose eyes had grown impossibly wide, the subtle glassiness of his inebriation lightly tinting them, giving them a brilliant shine. “For you? Just for you?” Steve nodded, and Tony laughed, a harsh bitter bark, and then faded into uneasy silence, looking down at the floor to his left. His hands moved. He had nothing on hand to tinker with. “The fuck are you doing to me, Rogers?”

“I’m doing nothing to you,” Steve replied, sounding slightly affronted, and Tony looked at him again, the fire of an argument once more giving him courage.

“Yes, you are,” he retorted firmly, his voice steel. “You treat me like an angel in the hospital, you come to the rescue like some goddamned prince charming – I am not an object to be recovered! I’m not some damsel to be rescued!”

“For God’s sake, Tony,” he voiced loudly enough to talk over the rambling inventor, not even noticing his usage of the Lord’s name in vain. “I’ve already told you this! I know you’re not an object! I know you’re not just some damsel I have to rescue! Did you think I’d be so keen on saving you if you were? No!” He put both his hands on Tony’s smaller shoulders, suddenly feeling the sinew beneath the skin, suddenly remembering exactly what he’d said. “I said you were valuable. I came for you, personally, because you’re a part of the team: because you are invaluable to us. We need you.”

“For my prowess at technology and my ability to get in the way,” Tony grumbled, his voice still slightly slurred.

“Yes and no,” Steve replied, leaning in closer to Tony’s face. Tony tried to take a step back, his eyes marginally wider in surprise, but Steve’s firm grasp held him gently in place. “But that’s not why **I** need you.”

And yes, Steve could see Tony’s eyes getting even wider. He knew his heart was beating a million miles an hour and he couldn’t keep up with it. It was the first time in his life he’d ever felt winded by something that wasn’t a mile-long sprint or an exerting mission spent fighting waves of enemies to stay alive. And he knew Tony wasn’t stupid, and thus, knew the genius had probably gotten to the chase before he was even sure he’d wanted to. He didn’t know whether or not to proceed.

Tony decided for him. He shifted uneasily on his bare feet, staring down at Steve’s worn shoes.  “Why,” he asked in a raspy whisper, “do you need me?”

Steve’s hands grew bold, then, and he reached up, sliding a hand from his shoulder up the graceful column of his neck and resting easily beneath Tony’s ear. Tony’s gaze shot up to him again, his eyes still wavering with uncertainty. He smiled, though his lips twitched in his nervousness. He fought the urge to lick his lips. Finally, he spoke. “Because you mean a lot to me.” It was the simplest truth in his life, but it was the most complicated to convey.

Tony’s eyes flicked back and forth between Steve’s, and then, suddenly, he darted away from Steve’s grip, grabbing at the bottle on the bureau next to them, and taking his third big gulp. He moved around in the room, looking at everything, touching everything, muttering ‘fuck’ under his breath. Steve was terribly confused, lingering by the door where he’d been left, his thumb still sensitive from where he’d brushed the stubble on Tony’s jaw.

“Cap, you can’t just say shit like that to me,” he finally said, not looking at him. “I’m not fucking capable right now. I’m… I’m fucked right now, Cap,” he said, his voice low, scraping a hand through his disheveled hair. “I’m hung up over…” He let out another bark of laughter, but there was a self-deprecating hint to it, and Steve didn’t like it. “I’m hung up over a fucking torturer. I’m seriously Stockholm Syndroming it right now.”

He turned back to Steve, scrubbing furiously at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. When he looked up again, his eyes were a little red, but Steve didn’t want to say anything; he didn’t want to break the spell.

“But, I mean, the guy was just doing it for his wife.” Tony didn’t want to elaborate further, but it was strung from his lips like he was throwing it up, like it was nothing but bile he had to expel. He kept going, despite his own trepidations. “That’s some serious dedication… It’s something I’ve been thinking about. To be willing to kill, to torment someone, just to keep them safe and comfortable…” He thought back to the kiss on his lips, to the chaste little something left to him by Lonnell. “I think he trusted me. I don’t know why he would, but he did. And I killed him.” He hammered on the wall with his free fist, but Steve didn’t jump. He just continued watching Tony.

Tony drank again. He looked so broken. “I knew there was no way to win this one. I mean, I’m Tony fucking Stark, there should **always** be a way for me to win something, and I always find it. But this time… There’s nothing. Nothing for me to do but stand back and watch this guy take the bullet for protecting those he loved. And I’m…” He huffed a dark breath of laughter here, but it broke in half. “And I’m sitting here in this stupid study dressed to mourn for him, wondering if I’d ever become someone who would be willing to do that: a man so in love he’d give anything to save them, anything at all, even his own freedom.”

Then, he took another drink and snickered to himself, but Steve didn’t think anything was funny. “Damn, I am drunk. I’m rambling on and on about this one fucker…”

Silence fell into the room like an unfortunate accident, like the calm deep breath the world takes before a storm. In this silence, Steve could find no understanding; he didn’t think he could ever be so forgiving of a person who had physically tormented him for a few days on end. In fact, he hadn’t been; he recalled the horrifying image of Bucky Barnes strapped to a table, weak and exhausted from whatever H.Y.D.R.A. had been doing to him, and the thought of it alone was enough to make him anxious and angry again.

But now wasn’t the time for anger. Tony was just as drained, just as hurt, as Bucky had been then, and even now, he felt just as compelled to help. He stepped forward almost without his own consent, moving until he was behind Tony. Tony minutely stiffened, but he reached forward and placed a placating hand on his shoulder, gently skimming it down his arm until he reached his hand. Gently, he pried Tony’s fingers off the neck once more, the man’s hand pliant and unresponsive, and he took the bottle, setting it on the table next to them. He took a deep breath, nerves frazzled, and, letting it go, began to speak.

“I won’t pretend to agree with you,” he said, trying to keep his voice as quiet as it could be. “But it is clear to me that you will not be at peace with Fury’s decision. Why you think that standing by and letting time take its course is a betrayal is not my privilege to understand. But maybe, if his wife is gone, maybe he **wants** to move on. Maybe he wanted this. Maybe…” Here he choked on his words, because he wasn’t used to sympathizing with murderers and tormentors, but Tony had gotten him screwed up as of late. “Maybe killing Hamilton was his last wish, and now he is at peace. But I don’t think he feels betrayed by you. I don’t see how he could. You never did anything to hurt him, Tony. You told him the truth. And I think, more than anything, he is grateful to you. I know I would be.”

For a while, they were silent. Tony’s back radiated heat and warmth, and Steve liked to think it was because of the arc reactor and the strength of his beating heart, rather than the alcohol pumping through his system. Steve’s thoughts had moved on from Tony, though, and had landed square on Peggy. He wondered briefly about suicide, and knew immediately why **he** hadn’t just tried to end it, to land himself in a world beyond this world: a world where, maybe, there would be a beautiful brunette waiting to dance with him. He knew it was because he was too loyal to his country, too strong and willing to fight on beyond this, and he knew that he had something to rely on to see him through.

Tony moved, then, breaking him from his reverie, and turned in his arms until they were facing one another. He looked up at Steve from their slight height difference, his eyes glassy and watery, his breathing slightly heavy. He leaned forward, then, slowly, tilting his head down as he moved, until his head ended up in the crook of his neck, his body leaning on Steve’s. Wordlessly, Steve wrapped his arms around Tony, his hands rubbing soothing circles in his back, and Steve could feel Tony’s arms wrapping tightly around his waist, hanging on for dear life. And, slowly, they began to rock back and forth, silent and simply breathing, the alcohol forgotten on the table.

Jarvis, in a common yet still brilliant display of astuteness, began to play a slow, soothing song. They swayed for what seemed like forever, spending eternity simply embracing one another and moving, at first subtly, and then with increasing movement until they were spinning around the room, still holding one another close.

Steve closed his eyes, leaning in low and breathing in the scent of Tony’s hair. He smelled like his shampoo, a small dash of cologne, and the faintest touch of oil, and grease, and copper. And in his content haze, he spoke. “Tony?” he asked quietly, feeling the dark hair underneath his lips stir with his breath.

“Hmm?” Tony replied, sounding drowsy and content, though there was still an additional weariness to his voice that was not only induced by exertion.

“Do you want to go to bed?”

There was a slight delay before his response floated out on a sigh. “Mmhmm.”

Steve smiled, pulling slightly away from Tony, moving his hand to Tony’s arm to support him in case he stumbled. They stood there a moment, Tony’s eyes still closed, as if he had fallen asleep on his feet. But soon they opened, the whites of his eyes shot with a little bit of red, and they flicked around a bit, as if re-gauging his surroundings. Without a word, Tony made his way to the door, Steve’s hand on his arm a comforting weight. Hand on the knob, Tony pulled open the door slowly, as if treading through water, and the pair walked out into the hallway, Steve pulling the door closed quietly behind them, afraid to break Tony from whatever he was experiencing. It seemed to bring the traumatized inventor to some sort of peace, and so he was willing to cope with it until he could see Tony fast asleep.

As they moved through the hallways, Steve on his toes to minimize his sound,  Tony became more lucid, taking a second to brush Steve’s hand away from his arm with a murmured, “I can support myself, thank you very much,” which was met with no argument from the captain. Nevertheless, he followed Tony through the hall until finally they stopped in front of his door, just in case he was apt to pass out somewhere unsavory and spend his night leaning against the wall or sleeping on a hard floor.

Tony put his hand on the handle, and then paused before suddenly turning to Steve. His eyes were as they usually were, observant and calculating, and it was a relieving sight, especially since he had been so out of it not too long ago. “I have been thinking about what you said,” he stated, his voice clearer than it was before, and Steve thought that maybe he had sobered up slightly on their walk, though it seemed highly unlikely. “About the Lonnell thing, I mean. I was thinking about what betrayal was, and who was in the wrong, and… it makes sense, I guess. And then I thought about suicide by justice system, and I thought…” Here, his brow furrowed, and then he sighed gruffly, looking at the ground as if accusing it of almost making him say something stupid. “I thought nothing, because I am drunk and stupid and kind of just…” His arms flopped at his sides. “…waiting.”

Steve cocked a brow. “Waiting?” he asked, careful to keep his hands to himself. He couldn’t deny that there was the growing urge to touch Tony, to comfort him somehow, to re-immerse him in a dreamlike state that would allow him to rest easily. But he refrained as well as he could.

Tony looked up from his glare at the floor, as if suddenly realizing that Steve was there. “Yeah. Waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Steve asked again, hoping Tony would iterate and not glare at the floor again. He couldn’t really understand Tony at the best of times, but he was hoping that he could figure him out some more, with time.

“Waiting for you to rag on me or something. Mother hen me. You know.” Here he narrowed his eyes and started wagging his finger, his lips pulled in a comic parody of a frown. “Whaddya doin’ gettin’ drunk, I told you a thousand times not to drink so much, dammit Tony, you’re a crappy Avenger, you’re not doin’ so hot in my book, pretty soon you’ll be paying for a new liver, back in my day, blah blah blah.” He waggled his finger some more, mouthing ‘meh, meh, meh’ a few more times and denouncing little invisible children that were, sadly, not actually present for the spectacle. Steve laughed, because Tony honestly looked at least forty years older with that face, and he sounded it too. Tony stopped, simply smiling a little to himself.

“I’m not going to badger you about that, Tony,” he said, coming down from his giggles. But there was **one** thing he did want to say. He opened his eyes, unaware he had closed them in his mirth, and looked at Tony seriously, a small smile still gracing his features. Tony took a second to think that smile was probably the best thing that had happened to him all week. _Hands down better than that whole Fury debacle. Fuck that noise._

“However,” Steve continued, his voice softer, and Tony felt the sudden urge to flee, because Steve was going to say something sentimental again, he could feel it, and he didn’t know if he was still not ready or if he’d somehow grown in the past half hour. _Only one way to tell._ “I am going to say this: That you, Tony Stark, were my first dance, and you were the only dance I could ever want.” His smile grew, then, and he picked up Tony’s hand gently between his own, lifted it to his face, and left a gentle kiss on his knuckle. “Get some rest. I will see you tomorrow, most likely.”

And with that, Steve turned away, and was heading toward the elevator, and _goddamnit Tony, don’t just stand there like a fucking tool and let him **leave –**_

He didn’t. He rushed the two hurried steps necessary for him to reach for Steve’s bicep, grasping it none too gently and turning the super soldier before securing his lips in a kiss. Steve’s reaction was slow, almost adapting, as if learning Tony slowly, and Tony reveled in it. He loved the languid motion of his lips, the soft sighs he was giving. For a few moments he stayed close to him, allowing them to kiss slowly, and he pulled away, grasping gently at the hairs at the base of Steve’s skull. He looked up just as the blue eyes fluttered open, pupils dilated not only from the oncoming darkness, and Steve was slack-jawed, putty in his hands. He knew what they wanted, but still, he had to ask. _Maybe Rogers is rubbing off on me. I’m starting to act like a fucking gentleman. The tabloids would **love** that._

“Stay?” he murmured, his voice lodged deep in his throat, his hands petting gently at his blonde hair. Steve’s eyes narrowed slightly, his cognitive ability returning to him, but when a smile dawned on his face, Tony couldn’t help but reflect his own.

“Of course,” he replied warmly, his smile far too bright for the darkness, and then they were kissing again, their bodies pressed close, and all the warmth that they had was concealed between the two of them.

Steve’s hands wandered the expanse of his back, tracing the line of his spine, dipping into the fine edges of sinew he had acquired. Tony’s own hands couldn’t stop running through the finely combed hair as if desperately trying to mess it up, pressing the fabric of the hoodie close to his body in an attempt to feel all the hardened muscle waiting underneath. The sounds they made were music to their ears, whether their growls were soft or their sighs were airy.

Steve wanted to say ‘I love you,’ wanted to press those words into his skin, because he thought that maybe he was sure of it. The evidence was in the hands tracing Tony as if they adored him, wanting to etch his form into every available paper he could find, in the burns on his jaw and cheek from where Tony’s facial hair scratched at him, in the way his heart sped up and he couldn’t stop himself from pressing kisses to those lips. Instead, he simply said what he knew to be best. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Tony pulled back quickly, and Steve was fascinated with the sudden changes in Tony. Earlier Tony was drunk and maudlin, feeling as if he was a traitor and condemning himself to the terrible thought that he had let someone he cared about down. But now, Tony was smiling, and it sent his head into a spiral, his heart pounding against his ribcage. “Haven’t you heard, Rogers?” he asked, a challenge in his voice. He could feel his hands curling into the nape of his neck, and there was nowhere else he’d rather have been. “I’m Iron Man. There’s no way I’m going down without a fight.” Tony kissed him again, and he allowed it, embracing him tightly as the inventor blindly steered them backwards toward his room.

Steve knew then that it was okay if he didn’t tell Tony he loved him. There was still time enough for them to learn more of one another, to embrace every detail in every curve of skin, in every spoken word. Steve didn’t know when Tony had gone from ‘Mr. Stark’ to ‘Tony’, and he couldn’t remember caring any less than he did now. For one night, this was their chance, and they would spend it reconciling moments missed that simply couldn't wait any longer.

 _Tomorrow isn’t right now,_ Tony found himself thinking as he gazed into blue eyes and cracked a small smile, _and I **live** for the now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I just kind of spent a moment in the chapter text section brushing up the last half, and now my doubts are severely lessened to maybe just a few bits I think I might have rushed. Go ahead and tell me if you think something's mashed together or too drawn out or implausible for their characters. Or, if you just want to leave a review and say whatever you want, I'm definitely okay with that too. :D
> 
> Besides maybe a surprise epilogue, this story should be successfully concluded. Thank you SO terribly much for the kind comments, the lovely kudos, and the awesome support. :D I hope you guys have a great one! *insert epic exit here*

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on [tumblr!](http://exacteyewriting.tumblr.com)


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